meg hearts books

3 stars? 3.5 stars? This is a hard book to review (I should say books b/c most of my thoughts apply to both Shatter Me and Unravel Me). I liked it but I also didn't like it. I don’t even know. Let me break this down pro/con style and then you can decide.PRO: Writing StyleThe biggest pro for me was the prose. I like flowery prose. I thought the runaway metaphors and strike-through thoughts interesting and creative. I liked the evocative imagery. It was flowery enough to read like poetry, but grounded enough that I still knew what was going on (unlike anything by Francesca Lia Block which is gorgeous but I’m left feeling like I have no idea what just happened).CON: JulietteI have never wanted to slap a protagonist as bad as I want to slap the shit out of Juliette. It seems like Juliette spends 90% of this book off in a corner crying, angsting about this love triangle she’s found herself in. Which is so completely not the most serious thing happening to her, yet somehow, it's pretty much the only thing she's thinking about. Tahereh Mafi is obviously doing this on purpose because a character straight up calls her out on it AND THEN NOTHING CHANGES. I was really excited because I thought maybe we’d see some character growth. Nope. It’s like the epiphany never happened, she goes right back to crying. CON: Sooooooo Romance-centricI have nothing against mushy stuff but in this case, if it’s not Adam/Warner-related, it’s barely in the book. There is so much stuff Mafi touched on that is never really explored and it gets pretty frustrating. Beyond writing style, how much enjoyment you get from this book entirely depends on how you feel about the romance. And I felt kind of ehhhhhh about it. It wasn't the way the romance was written (I’ll get to that in a second) it’s more the two love interests and how Juliette interacts with both of them. There’s the instalove factor, the lying, the indecisiveness, the noble sacrifices, the ‘I know he can be a better person, the angst angst angst ANGST ENDLESS ANGST OH. MY. GOD. PRO: HOTRegardless of how you feel about who Juliette's kissing, Tahereh Mafi can write a sexy scene. We’ll leave it like that. Final verdict:I am definitely going to read book 3. There is a ton of potential for a decent conclusion. The (severely underplayed) dystopian society may be explored a little more and there are a handful of supporting characters that seem like they’d be pretty awesome as actual characters instead of just dialogue-generators stringing together the angsty/mushy bits. The end of Unravel Me makes me think that Juliette may (slightly) be growing as a character and hopefully as she does, the scope of the story will too. I don’t know, we’ll see. Either way I've liked the books enough that I’m committed to seeing it through.