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A review by sotnasck
Restore Me by Tahereh Mafi
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
1.0
beware of spoilery review :)
Oh, man... I don't know where to start with this review.
The other day I've read Shatter Me again and it was not a surprise to me that I felt differently towards many things that I have loved before, maybe I outgrew this series, maybe I'm just more conscious and critical of things... whatever the reason, I finished the re-read wanting to slap some sense into Juliette and all of her metaphors (that are gone in Restore Me, so take from that what you will) but I understood that it was the first book and Juliette would get much better by the end of Ignite Me, it was a development, she was going to find herself by the end of it. So imagine my surprise when a fourth book comes out and Juliette is STILL finding herself, which is weird because we had three books of that. And, okay, finding one self is a life going proccess I'll give you that, but this is fiction and we have character arcs and developments that happened in the past three books, so I have a hard time accepting that instead of moving forward we're going in circles here.
When I heard the news of a fourth book my first question was, why? My first fear was, is Juliette really going for Supreme Commander when she knows nothing about leadership or politics? Hasn't she been locked in the past 3 years or so? How is she going to pull it off? The answer is: she doesn't, and I appreciate the fact that it is acknowledged that she sucks at it, and when that happened I thought "alright, she's aware that she's not fit for it so we're going to work on it right?" Wrong. Juliette spends 3/4 of the book complaining she doesn't know what to do while actively doing nothing to improve herself. She doesn't learn, she doesn't work, she goes on walks and stares at the ocean and thinks "I'm useless" but then she goes back to her room and makes out with her boyfriend or has a chat with her best friend. Not once do we see Juliette doing anything worth of someone in her position, so how am I supposed to feel sympathy for her struggle? I don't. Juliette complains and then gets mad when someone calls her out saying that Warner would be a better leader and then she has some diplomacy to work on and panicks because she thinks Warner would do a better job... And the whole situation becomes cringeworthy the more the book goes on, to the point of Juliette saying that all she does is read mail but then there's an event in two days and she has no idea about it. Listen, I have no problem with Juliette being inexperienced, hell, I was expecting it, but instead of working on this we got nothing and that is the problem.
Speaking of nothing... The Reestablishment is an organization of 6 (it doesn't matter, you'll understand why later) families from different continents that are all friends who had their children playing together, and by playing together I mean shooting each other with guns at the age of 10 because that's cruel and all the families had to be cruel and mad, and their children are all ruthless and trained and they all gather in Sector 45 for a Mean Girls slumber party. And I don't get how that happened. A place full of soldiers, a place monitored at all times, a place that was serious and shit that becomes a "mansion" with nothing but dinners and enemies coming in and out without no one saying anything. If the children of the commanders were so dangerous how could they just show up and do whatever they'd like? In Sector 45, the place where Juliette and Adam had a hard time escaping before. The answer is that everybody was so busy walking around doing nothing and having unnecessary drama that they didn't care enough about the "threat."
And boy, there's unnecessary drama. So much. Too much. And it pissed me off.
Juliette and Warner don't have a single meaningful conversation, after all that went down in the previous books, and I am supposed to buy this lack of communication between them. Every other character is telling them to talk with each other but they don't, suddenly it's too much to talk about and they gotta preserve their relationship by not talking. Seriously? The girl who murdered his father? The guy who unnapolagetic killed people in front of his girlfriend? Think about the first three books, then think about this little chat Juliette had with a new character:
Oh, man... I don't know where to start with this review.
The other day I've read Shatter Me again and it was not a surprise to me that I felt differently towards many things that I have loved before, maybe I outgrew this series, maybe I'm just more conscious and critical of things... whatever the reason, I finished the re-read wanting to slap some sense into Juliette and all of her metaphors (that are gone in Restore Me, so take from that what you will) but I understood that it was the first book and Juliette would get much better by the end of Ignite Me, it was a development, she was going to find herself by the end of it. So imagine my surprise when a fourth book comes out and Juliette is STILL finding herself, which is weird because we had three books of that. And, okay, finding one self is a life going proccess I'll give you that, but this is fiction and we have character arcs and developments that happened in the past three books, so I have a hard time accepting that instead of moving forward we're going in circles here.
When I heard the news of a fourth book my first question was, why? My first fear was, is Juliette really going for Supreme Commander when she knows nothing about leadership or politics? Hasn't she been locked in the past 3 years or so? How is she going to pull it off? The answer is: she doesn't, and I appreciate the fact that it is acknowledged that she sucks at it, and when that happened I thought "alright, she's aware that she's not fit for it so we're going to work on it right?" Wrong. Juliette spends 3/4 of the book complaining she doesn't know what to do while actively doing nothing to improve herself. She doesn't learn, she doesn't work, she goes on walks and stares at the ocean and thinks "I'm useless" but then she goes back to her room and makes out with her boyfriend or has a chat with her best friend. Not once do we see Juliette doing anything worth of someone in her position, so how am I supposed to feel sympathy for her struggle? I don't. Juliette complains and then gets mad when someone calls her out saying that Warner would be a better leader and then she has some diplomacy to work on and panicks because she thinks Warner would do a better job... And the whole situation becomes cringeworthy the more the book goes on, to the point of Juliette saying that all she does is read mail but then there's an event in two days and she has no idea about it. Listen, I have no problem with Juliette being inexperienced, hell, I was expecting it, but instead of working on this we got nothing and that is the problem.
Speaking of nothing... The Reestablishment is an organization of 6 (it doesn't matter, you'll understand why later) families from different continents that are all friends who had their children playing together, and by playing together I mean shooting each other with guns at the age of 10 because that's cruel and all the families had to be cruel and mad, and their children are all ruthless and trained and they all gather in Sector 45 for a Mean Girls slumber party. And I don't get how that happened. A place full of soldiers, a place monitored at all times, a place that was serious and shit that becomes a "mansion" with nothing but dinners and enemies coming in and out without no one saying anything. If the children of the commanders were so dangerous how could they just show up and do whatever they'd like? In Sector 45, the place where Juliette and Adam had a hard time escaping before. The answer is that everybody was so busy walking around doing nothing and having unnecessary drama that they didn't care enough about the "threat."
And boy, there's unnecessary drama. So much. Too much. And it pissed me off.
Juliette and Warner don't have a single meaningful conversation, after all that went down in the previous books, and I am supposed to buy this lack of communication between them. Every other character is telling them to talk with each other but they don't, suddenly it's too much to talk about and they gotta preserve their relationship by not talking. Seriously? The girl who murdered his father? The guy who unnapolagetic killed people in front of his girlfriend? Think about the first three books, then think about this little chat Juliette had with a new character:
"We're all kind of messed up, that's true, but Warner's not a bad person. He's just trying to find a way to survive this insanity, just like the rest of us."
"Oh," I say, surprised.
Really, Juliette? You're surprised? Did you just woke up from a coma and forgot what happened in the three previous books? This is how I feel about this book, honestly. It feels like everybody forgot. Worse, the characters aren't themselves. Who is this Warner? And here is what hurt me the most, because I love Warner with all my heart, but I read this book and I couldn't find him. I'm actually glad he changed his appearance so much, because they are two different characters for me.
Nothing happens in this book. We have Juliette and Warner wandering around avoiding talking with each other, Juliette not learning how to do her job, Kenji having a ridiculous crush on the new girl*, a bunch of new characters that replaces the old ones like no big deal, indestructible Juliette™ , Juliette and Warner breaking up because it's impossible to work on a relationship without breaking up, Kenji and Warner being childish, the crazy ex-girlfriend trope and here is worth mentioning that I never expected such a low from Tahereh Mafi, what a disappointment. The plot is not there and suddenly in the last 5 chapters the Sector 45 is going to be destroyed so they stop their nonsense for five minutes to kill a bunch of people and get the old characters replaced for good and set the drama for the next book. Don't even get me started on the Ella's family thing, powerful sister, childhood friends and whatnot, this is not interesting. It's actually the opposite of interesting. We could have had so many great things, but this book was reduced to teenager drama full of suspense moments that were anything but suspense adding nothing. And we're back to Shatter Me level of characters being stupid, which would be okay if this was not the fourth book in the series.
*Seriously, what's up with that? Why you gotta do Kenji dirty like this? I was expecting a love interest for him but he was dumb and ridiculous and just to make the girl seem cooler than him? That is not okay. I'm actually really upset with this.
P.S. I never thought Adam would be the one thing I'm content with, yet, here we are.