Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

Juliette hasn't touched anyone in exactly 264 days.

The last time she did, it was an accident, but The Reestablishment locked her up for murder. No one knows why Juliette's touch is fatal. As long as she doesn't hurt anyone else, no one really cares. The world is too busy crumbling to pieces to pay attention to a 17-year-old girl. Diseases are destroying the population, food is hard to find, birds don't fly anymore, and the clouds are the wrong color.

The Reestablishment said their way was the only way to fix things, so they threw Juliette in a cell. Now so many people are dead that the survivors are whispering war-- and The Reestablishment has changed its mind. Maybe Juliette is more than a tortured soul stuffed into a poisonous body. Maybe she's exactly what they need right now.

Juliette has to make a choice: Be a weapon. Or be a warrior.

In this electrifying debut, Tahereh Mafi presents a world as riveting as The Hunger Games and a superhero story as thrilling as The X-Men. Full of pulse-pounding romance, intoxicating villainy, and high-stakes choices, Shatter Me is a fresh and original dystopian novel—with a paranormal twist—that will leave readers anxiously awaiting its sequel.

This new release has shot to my shortlist of best books released this year. I loved the plot, the characters, and everything about it. Juliette is a broken girl, but that is to be expected when she’s been in jail for 2 years and had no human contact for almost 1. I like that she still has agency and pushes to overcome doubts that she was born wrong. I think that, in her position, it would be very easy to give in to depression and despair, and although she brushes those she always manages to pull herself back enough to keep on going. The plot in this book is great, surprising but it has a flow to it that seems very natural and makes you want to keep reading. The romance is especially good. The two characters seem to support each other while still being independent and making choices jointly. Even though he’s stronger the boy never overpowers Juliette, instead they both recognize the strengths and weaknesses of themselves and their partner and work together to utilize them to get themselves out of bad situations. The very end seemed a little forced or not well set up in the former parts of the book, but since I think it is a setup for future books I will forgive it.