Restore Me (Shatter Me Book 4)

I was so thrilled when this book came out, as I had assumed the earlier triology had ended and it was one of the better ones I had read, so waited to read this on holiday with anticipation. Maybe it would have helped had I read the earlier 3 again, but really it never got off the ground. Bizarrely the book spent a long time on bits that were really unimportant, and some of the good characters who were in earlier books had v minor roles, but some of the only good bits in the book came from their "bits". Only right at the end did things get going, but by then, I'd lost the will to live and didn't really care, as the ending was sort of unpredicted and not really explained. Such a shame, as I've recommended this trilogy and thought this author was one of the better ones - maybe it's just a rubbish 4th book and the 5th one will be good?

I'm honestly so confused by this book, I felt like nothing really happened until just over the halfway mark. The first half felt like Juliette and Warner were just spilling all of their thoughts and feelings to the reader in verbal diarrhoea fashion. And yet they barley spoke to each other about anything, which I found quite bizarre, given how strong their relationship was at the end of Ignite Me. I fully understand the complex emotions that both J and W are experiencing after everything that happened in Ignite Me, but the first half of the book was literally pages and pages of them feeling low, confused and scared. It was quite boring and frustrating after a while to keep reading about the inner turmoil that they were facing, and it was almost as if 'sexy' scenes were put in to try and compensate for this. I was so excited for this, that I even read Ignite Me again (which was still amazing) to prepare myself, but this just made the problems with Restore Me even more obvious and disappointing. These once beloved characters just weren't the same for me, a part from Kenji, thank god for Kenji! But even he seemed different, almost played up a bit to contrast Juliette and Warners sombre moods. With Juliette it was as if all the personal progress she'd made in the previous books had disappeared and she was quite irritating at times, until half way in and she sort of remembered how powerful she was. In regards to Warner, we were given alternating chapters between him and Juliette, which unfortunately didn't work in his favour. I'm not quite sure why I didn't really take to his chapters, maybe I just preferred reading from J's point of view. Or perhaps it's because Warner has one of those personalities that is more intriguing when captured by others, and left with an air of mystery. Reading from his point of view just made me feel sorry for him more than anything. It also greatly annoyed me how Juliette and Warner treated Castle, like the dude's trying to help you and you both clearly need it! As others have said, there wasn't really any mention or appearances of previous characters, which was disappointing. And the new characters introduced weren't fleshed out that well, but I do think they have potential. Things definitely got more exciting towards the end of the novel, but ultimately it had quite a scattered plot line. Juliette and Warner's relationship took centre stage and to my surprise, I'd have preferred it didn't. Big revelations fell a bit flat for me as I just wasn't that invested in this book, things either happened far too fast to properly react to anything. Or things dragged on for so long that my interest was lost. I kept finding myself looking at how much of the book I had left and thinking, what big event could happen in this remaining section to make this worthwhile. I'm still not sure I found it to be honest, I feel...

Well I saw that coming... like in a million years. In the best possible way I am utterly speechless. I have not been this hooked on a series of books for a while and I am so excited for whatever comes next. Taking this journey with Juliette has been amazing and I have loved how she has grown through the books and how she has become this amazing woman, leader and friend. Even if she doesn't believe it herself. The story of her life is epic and the way Tahereh writes is just beautiful. And you feel like you are right there in amongst all of the chaos. Living and breathing it right along side all of the amazing characters in this story, Warner, Kenji, Castle, Adam, James. I could just keep going but I want to keep reading.

Complete honesty here. I almost stopped reading this halfway through. So sad considering my absolute love for the original trilogy. I still can’t believe how much I really don’t like this book. One star is a rarity for me and it breaks my heart to use it. The title of this book was such “click bait” as someone I was talking to called it. This book did nothing to “restore” any of the characters, the story or my love of this series. In fact, I’m 99% sure it has almost completely destroyed it. Honestly the only thing I can think right now is, what happened!? This book just felt like a giant ode to political correctness. Characters personalties and mannerisms were changed, whole characters were added for no apparent reason and served no real function and real depth was destroyed all in favor of not being perceived as insensitive or offensive. I’m tired of authors changing a series that was already wonderful to fit the standards of culture. This series was beloved as it was, people wanted to read the new book because they wanted a continuation of the narrative that already existed. And if Mafi wanted to add characters / change narratives, at least make them matter more than just being throw away appeasement filler. The characters I loved from the original trilogy were barely recognizable to me. The strong, confident Juliette who had learned to stand up for herself and was no longer hiding so much in her own mind is gone here. She comes across as almost near madness at times, completely defeated and a doubter. It’s like she reverted back to Juliette at the asylum but instead of still remaining kind, compassionate and considerate of others like she had before in the face of torture, hatred and struggles, she’s become harsh and unfeeling. The moment with her hair wasn’t what I think Mafi wanted it to be. It wasn’t this big, tough moment where the girl breaks free from her past. No, it was stupid, impulsive and honestly came across as an immature Juliette we left behind several books ago. I feel most sad for the complete ruin of Warner. His character was always the interesting one. The one we knew hardly anything about, which made him mysterious. But what we did know, we loved. We wanted more because under his shell was a broken boy we all loved and yet still admired for his quiet compassion and resilience in the face of it all. His unaffectedness about how the world viewed him, his utter love and belief in Juliette, his untiring strength. All of these gone with this book. He’s become an anxiety ridden, depressed, clingy person who came across as pathetic and pitiable. Things the Warner from the previous books would’ve hated to be seen as. And after three books of building him up as an unlikely hero, of shifting perspectives and seeing how he was truly a man of unexpected kindness and not heartless cruelty, he’s somehow again been made ...