Spoilers for the first 31 Chapters of Shatter Me and A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas.
I wrote this at 3 AM after finishing Chapter 31, so I am well aware this is very rambling with lots of run-on sentences, but these were my raw thoughts and reactions in my tiredness, so I left them as is.
Recently, I started reading Shatter Me, and so far I am really enjoying it. I actually started reading it last summer and DNFed it due to life circumstances, not the book itself, so when I picked it back up, I already had some vague memories of it, which I think may have influenced my opinions of the book, particularly my thoughts on Adam, but I’ll get to that in a moment.
For starters, I am really interested in world-building. We see through Juliette’s memories that this was once and just recently the modern and normal world outside of Juliette’s condition, and this was within Juliette’s 17 years of life, so the seeming fall of the modern world happened VERY fast. Due to Juliette’s confinement, we really don’t even know how bad the world is yet. With this, I am really interested in seeing this because we normally see worlds super far after the collapse, such as Divergent or The Hunger Games, but this is closer to The Walking Dead in that our MC remembers normal life.
Of course, we also have to talk about Adam and Warner. So, in my first read, I read up through Juliette learning Adam was a soldier, so on this reread, I ultimately didn’t trust him when rereading the asylum bits. Now I feel like my distrust for him should’ve worn off, but it hasn’t. I feel it’s most likely influenced by me knowing Warner is the love interest and not Adam, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you shouldn’t trust that character, because just because two characters don’t end up together doesn’t mean one is evil, but there’s something about Adam that I really can’t shake. He gives me early book Tamlin vibes, and I feel like he’s going to betray Juliette. Some of his actions and motivations don’t entirely sit right with me, especially when hearing Warner’s witty comments and seeming distrust of Adam, but also, if he truly didn’t trust him, why would he leave Juliette in his care? Unless, of course, it was because he thought he couldn’t touch her, but even if he thought Adam couldn’t get physically ge to her, wouldn’t he be worried that Adam could manipulate her? And if that were the case, he would’ve never removed the cameras from her room. For a while, I had convinced myself that the little boy Juliette killed by accident was actually Adam’s brother, but in chapter 31, we actually met James, so that’s not true. I was really convinced he was luring her away from Warner’s (misguided) protection so that he could take revenge on her.
We also just learned that Warner is probably able to touch her. Like Juliette had pointed out, it’s very unlikely that both Adam and Warner were both capable of touching her, so I am highly suspicious of what makes those two characters so special. Speaking about Warner, I am VERY interested in learning about his family life. The touchiness of bringing up his mom and Adam saying no one really knows what that’s about is crazy interesting to me. That’s where my thoughts are currently on the book, so I will continue to update as I read through the series!