Restore Me by Tahereh Mafi
Rating: 3/5
(SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST THREE BOOKS, DUH)
So first I’m going to start with a little recap of the first three books because wow I didn’t remember anything about this series because I read it so long ago! So Juliette Ferras is an insane girl who can kill anyone with her touch… but after three books she actually learns the full extent of her abilities (and a bunch of other stuff). There’s a LOT of angst. Like… TONS. I remember really loving these books the first time I read them but goodness when I was re-reading them now I was so surprised because WOW, there’s WAY. TOO. MUCH. ANGST.
Super hormonal, super emotional, incredibly irrational teenagers. Like, we’re in the midde of a war and all you can think about is high school level drama? Kenji (the best character, the only rational one to be honest) calls it all out so at least I know the author was doing it intentionally. And for the most part, I get it. Juliette hasn’t been touched or treated like a human basically her entire life. Of course she’s going to act like a child, she hasn’t had that kind of experience!
Anyway, in comes Aaron Warner who is completely misunderstood by everyone, really dark and mysterious totally evil and amazing. He’s also one of the only rational kids in this story, but that’s besides the point. At the end of the original trilogy, Warner and Juliette are together, Juliette has killed Warner’s father (totally d-bag, terrible terrible human definitely deserved to die) and has claimed herself to be Supreme Commander.
- HERE’S WHERE RESTORE ME STARTS.
It’s about two weeks later and Juliette realizes there’s a lot more to being a leader than just declaring yourself leader and hoping for peace. (Much easier said than done) She has to learn a lot (not just about the Reestablishment but also about Warner and how much he just hasn’t told her because “It hasn’t come up.” HA.).
The one thing I noticed throughout the series was that the writing style became much better. Maybe it was because Juliette became more bearable and less “I think I’m crazy, OMG I’m so sad boohoo” and more “This world sucks I need to do something about it.”
In this story, I got really scared that Tahereh Mafi was going to pull an Allegiant and kill of the main character because she started alternating chapters. But it actually made the story clearer and helped to bridge the deficit of knowledge because Juliette’s perspective was so limiting.
I really liked the new characters (all so shady, even Nazeera even though I love her and she’s wonderful I still don’t know if I really trust her) and how they brought this extra mystery to the story (as if we weren’t already so lost!). This new plotline really had me on edge and I’m really excited for what’s to come because this plot BLEW ME AWAY. <spoiler>Ha, see what I did there? HAHAHA I’M STILL SHOOK</spoiler>
It’s such an exciting twist to the story and honestly this is my favorite of the series so far. Each book gets better and better. This didn’t fail to disappoint at all!
What was your favorite part? Who’s your favorite new (and old) character? Mine are Kenji and Nazeera! What did you think of THAT ENDING?! <spoiler>I knew that Juliette’s parents were the leaders from Oceania, I totally called that as soon as we found out about her whole adoption thing, but the rest of that?! CRAZY.</spoiler>
Star is All Booked Up 