Review: Brilliant! Ok, so maybe that is extreme, but let me explain why!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 29, 2012
Brilliant!Ok, so maybe that is extreme, but let me explain why!First of all this novella @ 111 pages is told in Warner, the "bad guy" in the first books main pov. It is well written, and offers an insight as to what is really going on inside Warner's head, and boy was it good!Whoa! Was I surprised how much I enjoyed this book, why, you ask? Because, not only does Mafi take an unlikable character and transform him into somebody that you will swoon over, but you will see a vulnerable side to him. You'll understand and get a slight insight as to why he makes the choices he did, and does, in Shatter Me as well as this book.We see a softer side to Warner and I enjoyed every sentence in this book.I also enjoyed reading more from Juliette's notebook and the words that poured out of it, into Warner's mind, as he read her journal and felt every emotion that she was feeling while being locked up in the insane asylum, I think that's what it was supposed to be. Anyway, the feelings and emotions that were written in Juliette's notebook were powerful, to both Warner and myself. I'm sharing some of them below, plus a snippet from Warner's pov.From Juliette's notebook:"My face is caked with blood from when they threw me on the ground, and my hands are still shaking even as I write this. This pen is my only outlet, my only voice, because I have no one else to speak to, no mind but my own to drown in and all the lifeboats are taken and all the life preservers are broken and I don't know how to swim I can't swim I can't swim and it's getting so hard. It's like there are a million screams caught inside of my chest but I have to keep them all in because what's the point of screaming if you'll never be heard and no one will ever hear me in here. No one will ever hear me again"."We followed the tale laid out for us, the prose pinned down in every square foot of space we'd acquired. We were content with the plot twists that only mildly redirected our lives. We signed on the dotted line for the things we didn't know we cared about. We ate the things we shouldn't, spent money when we couldn't, lost site of the Earth we had to inhabit and wasted, wasted, wasted everything. Food. Water. Resources."Warner's pov:"I'm trying to focus, telling myself these are just empty words, but I'm lying. Because somehow, just reading these words is too much: and the thought of her in pain is causing me an unbearable amount of agony. To know that she experienced this. She was thrown into this by her own parents, cast off and abused her entire life. Empathy is not an emotion I've ever known, but now it's drowning me, pulling me into her world I never knew I could enter. And though I've always believed she and I shared many things in common, I did not know how deeply I could feel it.Its killing me."