Shatter Me is a Young Adult novel written by Tahereh Mafi. It centers on 17 year old Juliette, who was thrown into a cell for murder because her touch is fatal. The world outside is falling apart and The Reestablishment - the group who promised to change that - is struggling to keep order. So they decide to use Juliette as their weapon and she must make a choice: be a weapon or be a warrior.
Original Trilogy
- Shatter Me (2011)
- Unravel Me (2013)
- Ignite Me (2014)
Additional Novellas
- Destroy Me (2012), told from Warner's perspective.
- Fracture Me (2013), told from Adam's perspective.
- Shadow Me (2019), told from Kenji's perspective.
- Reveal Me (2019), told from Kenji's perspective.
- While the first two novellas were released as ebooks initially, they were later published together as Unite Me in 2014. The latter two novellas were later published together as Find Me in 2019.
- Believe Me (2021), set after Imagine Me and functions as an extended second epilogue
Sequel Trilogy
- Restore Me (2018)
- Defy Me (2019)
- Imagine Me (2020)
Shatter Me shows examples of:
- At Least I Admit It: Warner knows full well he's a terrible person, and though he doesn't take pride in it, doesn't try to pretend he's not.
- Bad Powers, Good People: Juliette can kill people with her touch, but she's determined to live a normal life and not use her power to harm anyone unless provoked.
- Because You Were Nice to Me:
- A big part of Juliette's attraction to Adam. They knew each other at school and weren't friends, exactly, but he was nicer to her than the other kids.
- Warner mocks this; when Juliette cites this trope as why she likes Adam, he incredulously says "that's it?" and goes on to rant about how it says more about the other people in her life than Adam, that she had just as much a right to basic human kindness as anyone else, and that if she really wants simple adoration she can just get a dog.
- Blessed with Suck:
- Some superpowers are this, especially if one hasn't learn to control them. Juliette's, notably, inflicts massive pain on anyone who touches her, meaning she's not only gone her whole life without human contact but can't help anyone if they're falling, injured, etc.
- Warner's mother is "blessed" with the power of being hurt by anything that touches her, including her own hair, clothes, and skin. She has to spend every day drugged out of her mind and has become an Empty Shell because of it.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Kenji is heard but not seen talking to Adam a few chapters before he makes he's entrance in Chapter 35.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Even after she recovers from the effects of her solitary confinement, Juliette is still a somewhat spacey individual, prone to going off on mental tangents or constructing abstract metaphors in the middle of a mission. Adam lampshades it in Fracture Me when he notes that she's retreated inside her head again by the way she's staring into space.
- Elaborate Underground Base: Omega Point, created by Castle to be a place for people with gifts to gather and plan a rebellion against the Reestablishment.
- Empty Shell: Warner's mother is one. Her power inflicts her with agony every second of her life, so they have to keep her on morphine 24/7, which has addled her mind so much she doesn't talk, react, or emote.
- Even Evil Has Standards:
- Anderson is the main villain of the series, he has physically and mentally abused his sons and their mothers, had no issue executing innocents and cares for no one. Even so, he says taking advantage of "much younger than him" Juliette would be the stuff of sick minds.
- Warner is the self-admittedly ruthless commander in charge of squashing the heroes, but he has absolutely no tolerance for Domestic Abuse. Considering his father, it makes sense.
- Extreme Doormat: As a result of her Abusive Parents and the shunning she received from other children, Juliette became this. She was desperate to be liked and hoped that doing whatever she could for others would make that happen. Unfortunately, it didn't, and the crux of her Character Development is growing out of this.
- Finishing Each Other's Sentences: Sonya and Sara tend to do this a lot, along with speaking in unison.
- Healing Hands: Twins Sonya and Sara have this power and naturally work as medics for the resistance.
- Hidden Depths: He's too hardworking and chilly to be The Dandy, but Warner of all people has a love of fashion. His closet is even shown to be bigger than his bedroom.
- Informed Attractiveness: Juliette is described as excessively beautiful by Anderson, who implies her mother altered her genetics in a lab. Warner also falls into this trope.
- Invisibility: Keiji's power. Further, if he's touching others, he can make them invisible too, which he puts to good use when helping break Juliette out in Book 1 or on recon missions in later books.
- Just Think of the Potential!: What kicks off the plot is Warner removing Juliette from her solitary confinement so he can study her powers for military purposes. His actual goal is to try and reverse-engineer them to find a cure for his mother.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Warner tells Juliette this, and she later admits he's right. They were both raised by Abusive Parents, suffered from a Friendless Background, and have a lot of pent-up rage towards the world; Juliette just chose to repress said rage, while Warner embraced it.
- The Ophelia: Juliette in the first book is half-mad from being locked up in solitary confinement for a year. Eventually she recovers and settles down into a normal Cloudcuckoolander.
- Parental Abuse: All over the damn place. Adam's drunk father beat him, Warner's father whipped him on his birthdays, Juliette's parents tortured her, the other Supreme kids show signs of being treated as adults from an early age, etc.
- Pet the Dog: An almost literal example. While on a recon mission in Unravel Me, Juliette catches sight of Warner feeding a stray dog. She's so dumbfounded she almost gets caught then and there.
- Plucky Comic Relief: Kenji. Deconstructed in later books, which reveal he has his share of emotional turmoil but feels like he can't ever show it, because everyone expects him to be "the funny guy".
- Poisonous Person: Juliette's skin burns anyone who touches her. In Ignite Me, she learns how to turn this on and off at will.
- Purple Prose: The main series is narrated with this, meant to be representative of Juliette's initial mental state. Even after she improves, though, her narration remains abstract and spacey, so this never really goes away. Later novellas like Destroy Me completely lack said prose, supporting the fact that it's unique to Juliette's perspective.
- Rule of Symbolism: The superpowers of Adam and Warner, who comprise Juliette's Love Triangle. Adam is a Power Nullifier, while Warner is a Power Copier. Adam tends to smother Juliette in the name of keeping her safe, while Warner wants to study her powers for his own purposes. Another layer of symbolism is how Warner's just a copier instead of a parasite, as he also wants to see Juliette bloom into her power instead of just stealing it.
- Tagalong Kid: Adam's younger brother James.
- Wham Line: Unravel Me gives us My father. This man is my father.
- Villainous Crush: Warner has one on Juliette, partially because of her powers and partially because he recognizes that they're not that different.
