Defy Me By Tahereh Mafi Book Review
“I want to remember to celebrate more. I want to remember to experience more joy. I want to allow myself to be happy more frequently. I want to remember, forever, this look on Aaron’s face, as he’s bullied into blowing out his birthday candles for the very first time.
(pg. 357)
This is, after all, what we’re fighting for, isn’t it?
A second chance at joy.”
About
Author: Tahereh Mafi
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy Dystopian
Series: Shatter Me book 5
Synopsis
The gripping fifth installment in the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestselling Shatter Me series. Will Juliette’s broken heart make her vulnerable to the strengthening darkness within her?
Juliette’s short tenure as the supreme commander of North America has been an utter disaster. When the children of the other world leaders show up on her doorstep, she wants nothing more than to turn to Warner for support and guidance. But he shatters her heart when he reveals that he’s been keeping secrets about her family and her identity from her—secrets that change everything.
Juliette is devastated, and the darkness that’s always dwelled within her threatens to consume her. An explosive encounter with unexpected visitors might be enough to push her over the edge.
Review
Spoilers Contained Below
Dear Shatter Me fanatics,
Tahereh did it again.
She wrote another beyond amazing read. I literally read this book in two days because I could not put it down!!! I mean, you have the Juliette, excuse me, Ella chapters—–can we pause for a moment to talk about how iconic it was to see Juliette’s name crossed out and Ella’s name written instead, kind of like how Juliette would cross her thoughts out—–Kenji point of views, and Warner point of views and each time you just want to know what they’re going through and experiencing. What’s also kind of funny was how Warner’s name was actually Aaron and Juliette was actually named Ella and how they have two different names from what this book started off with. What series do you know where the literal ship name changes in the series like that? It’s no longer Warner and Juliette, but Aaron and Ella. And can we also mention how Kenji really went from a side character to a main character with his own POV—–like my bro got a promotion in this book 😆! Loved that for him 💜.
This book started off with Kenji’s point of view where he’s processing all the utter poop that goes down once Juliette used her siren-like powers to kill over 600 people. Then it went straight into Kenji blacking out and Juliette being taken away, and I think starting off this way kind of gives you the Avengers Endgame scene of Hawkeye in the beginning because you get to see the thick of the battle and destruction from a different point of view—-how it affected everyone else. So I thought that was cool.
Kenji then wakes up underground with who was left after the whole catastrophe and Nazeera is there and if you don’t ship Kenji and Nazeera, I don’t know what you’re doing 🤪. It’s funny how Kenji would look at her and dislike her because he thought she was a traitor, but then he would have to catch himself when he thought about how pretty she was. Then they have this steamy scene where they talk things through and how she really wants to just help them save Juliette because she was her childhood friend. I liked when they were in the cafeteria and then Brendan and Ian went up to him and joked that Kenji was doing something with Nazeera in the bedroom before dinner and Ian said something about how Nazeera wasn’t even that pretty. Kenji literally dropped his pizza in shock and anger, which proved to Brendan and Ian that he did like her.
After everything everyone has been through, it was nice to see them banter with each other in a good natured way and to still find happiness and light in life. The Kenji POVs also gave you a deeper, vulnerable side to Kenji that I loved reading. Kenji always comes across as humorous and strong, but to see that facade kind of falter because he lost his best friend and he didn’t know how to get her back and they had to figure out a plan, was just hard on him. It was hard to read how despondent Kenji felt and how he tried to think about James’s jokes to lift his spirits. Honestly, Kenji would make a good brother to James because he cares about him just as much as Adam. Adam, again, doesn’t really pop up in this book a lot, which was fine by me because the book wasn’t about him and he’s not my favorite. Still, if there’s one thing that Adam has to do in the future is tell James that Aaron is his brother. We still need to fill him in!
I also liked how James was the only one who caught on to what the Reestablishment was doing in making this whole thing a distraction to get Aaron and Juliette and to make people question Juliette’s leadership. What a smart kid. But I liked that people actually listened to him because most times kids are just ignored, so what a win for the kids!
Then there comes the part where Delalieu (what an interesting name, not in a bad way, just hard to spell 😂) who was Anderson’s dad. The fact that Delalieu served his son was just beyond weird or how he would stay around and just watch his son manipulate and torture and do all these vile things without setting him straight. I think if a father lets his son run uncheck like that, he’s scared of the monster the son has become. So Anderson was gone at this point and things were falling apart, so what better reason to fall apart with it too right? And boy does Delalieu spill the TEA! He came in all shaken and stirred and just spilled his guts about everything and I was sitting there wondering why in the world would he speak out so willingly now? He knew Ella when she was little and was the one to bring her to Anderson’s office to get her adopted and he knew Aaron and Ella loved each other no matter how many times Anderson tried to change the narrative. I mean he wiped Aaron and Ella’s memory every time they fell in love because he didn’t want his son to fall in love with an experiment. This was so a Lilo and Stitch thing. Experiment 626, if you know what I mean 😆. And Delaliey sat by while his daughter was sick and while the husband probably caused her to be sick and I mean, how could Delalieu stand for that. If you were a man or a woman and watched the people you love get hurt without saying anything, are you just as to blame as the person who does the malicious act? That’s the true question here.
I don’t think that Delalieu was a bad person, but I do think there was something kind of cowardly about him not standing up to his own son-in- law. I think that he should have said something sooner or tried to stop everything from spiraling before they just became worse because in the end Delalieu had to watch so many people suffer when he could have taken a stand for it. If he got hurt for standing up for what he believed was right, I think he would have been honorable because at least he tried. But I guess it was better late than never that he ran to Castle and spilled the tea because better late than never, right?
Delalieu also talked about Ella and Emmaline being a big part of this whole Operation Synthesis thing, which just gave me some screwed up Mara Dyer vibes. I think the whole title of this experiment of being operation synthesis was interesting within itself because synthesis means “the combination of ideas to form a theory or system,” so calling it as so gives the impression that they had to combine different aspects to “reestablish” this ‘better’ world where they controlled the people more. I also think of synthesis and synthetic with Ella and Emmaline’s parents, Max and Evie, creating this false idea of what the world was. We’ll get to that later.
So Delalieu was singing like a canary and then all of a sudden, he gets shot in between the eyes by none other than . . .
GOSH DARN ANDERSON!!! 😳
You know if there’s one thing TV and YA has taught me, it’s not to be surprised if the person who was killed off was alive this whole time. Thank you to Pretty Little Liars and Riverdale 😂 .
During this whole planning and revelation, we read Juliette and Warner’s POVs, which were very groggy because they were drugged. But they were also very insightful as to past memories of their childhoods. I liked that we got to see how Juliette’s name came to be and how she met Aaron when they were younger.
Now, let me tell you the overarching lesson I learned from this gosh darn series and I kid you not, I think Tahereh Mafi is on to something: DO NOT BE A GOSH DARN HORRIBLE, CRAZED, SADISTIC PARENT!!!! Tell me that isn’t the lesson of this series!!!🤪
I swear we have horrible parents from left to right. And I don’t mean that to come across rude, but first we have Anderson who tortured his son and stole his memories and would kill him if he had to. Then we have Juliette’s crazed parents who let her be an experiment and then they tortured her and drugged her and don’t even get me started on ripping the sister apart in some alien type tube thing where she lost all five freaking senses. You know let me just talk about Emmaline because this is horrible parenting at it’s finest! Okay, so where do I begin with this? I was like we’re going to meet Emmaline in this book because duh, so I thought we would meet someone with brown hair and who Ella would have this touching reunion with with hugs and tears, but nooooooooo! She’s in a freaking tube with barely there hearing and she can’t see and what I’m imagining is like a ripped up Barbie doll with the eyes gouged out like OH MY FREAKING GOSH!!! They did that to their own FREAKING daughter! I mean who does that!!!!!! Sick twisted nut jobs that’s who!!! I couldn’t stand that scene.
I mean someone should have filed child abuse or something! UGH! I seriously couldn’t deal with these sicko parents.
Thenwe learned that Emmaline can mind control people and make them see visions that they want to see and that she’s been projecting her mind control to others to see the Reestablishment as rundown so that they would trust in it more. So what I’m hearing is that this entire world is actually nice looking, but the Reestablishmen is just manipulating people to think it’s trash. What crazed world this was? 😖 Emmaline was also the one giving the memories to Aaron and Ella to remember before it was too late and she was completely destroyed and torn apart. But the hard thing was when Emmaline was like kill me because death was better than what she felt. I mean, gosh, I could only imagine. Ella didn’t do it obviously because she just met the sister and couldn’t kill her. Instead, Ella escaped and vowed to come back for her. I hope we do go back for her. How we can salvage Emmaline is beyond me, but we have to try.
Now let’s talk about said crazy parents, shall we. We all have crazy parents, but none as crazy as theirs. I can’t believe Ella’s parents AUDACITY to act all cordial and homey with her after letting their own child be injected with stuff and bleed and scream. They were like “dinner” and I was like “oh, please, spare me the theatrics!” They thought they could play house like we were in the dollhouse or that this was Toy Story. Newsflash, this is reality! And this whole time the parents thought they wiped her memory, but Ella was stronger than their dumb drugs and had her memory and more. I was kind of confused though as to how she fought the drugs to still have her memories. Was it her blood or something? I know she didn’t have her powers because she was manacled. I’m still curious as to how she did that.
But I was thinking a good book title for this would have been Try Me 😂 The sass would have been real.
Ella faked her smiles in this game and then came the part with the mother.
“Evie Sommers is the worst kind of human being. A traitor to humanity. An unadulterated sociopath.”
(pg. 229-30)
She’s not wrong. Gosh, did I love Ella’s maliciousness and her Evil Queen moment when she ripped out her own mother’s heart and killed her!!! I’m sorry if that makes me sound like a horrible person, but gosh, you had to have loved that that “unadulterated sociopath” was G-O-N-E gone!
Speaking of killing parents, this was another thing Aaron and Ella had in common.
Aaron had been trapped in his cell for a long time and had starved. So then his dad came to visit him the day before Aaron’s birthday like a big “Surprise, I’m alive!” Probably the worst present ever! Can we pause to talk about how sad it is that Aaron never had a birthday cake in his life 😢? Parenting fail right there.
But back to the story because in a white hot vengeance, Aaron managed to stab his father with a letter opener?! I mean, I have a letter opener and in no ways do I think that small thing could do enough damage to kill 😳. I think in the moment Aaron was just very heated and thought that his dad wouldn’t survive it, but I loved that Aaron had that strength in him to actually go through with hurting his dad because the dad kept pushing him and saying things like you would never do it. He did. Don’t try him! Especially when you’ve tortured him, wiped his memories, stole all the love in his life, and manipulated him. A letter opener to the neck was nothing compared to that. Aaron left his dad to bleed in his cell and stole his guns, and in a way I thought it was unusual because wouldn’t they have had security cameras to see what was going on? Or wouldn’t they have heard to trigger warning that Aaron left his cell? Why didn’t he shoot the dad with the guns? Part of me knows that despite all the boiled up rage that Aaron has for his father, he still loves him deep down for what he is: a father.
What was weirder though was the respect that Anderson had for Aaron when he saw Aaron before he escaped from the Oceania base they were being held captive at. Out of all the things that Anderson could have been proud of Aaron for, it was for nearly killing him. “You did good work back there . . . It was a strong throw. Solid.” Why doesn’t Anderson just say, thanks for trying to kill me, boy, I’ve never been prouder? Honestly, their relationship is beyond wired. Compared to Evie and Max, Anderson looks like a saint.
Part of the whole break out scene, Kenji and Nazeera were there. We left off with Kenji reeling from Anderson being alive. Then Anderson said something about how he’s been getting updates as to what they were doing and everyone looked to Nazeera before Kenji fainted and fell. The thing that left me highly confused was this whole Kenji and Nazeera thing before the actual escape. I feel like there’s this big gaping whole as to everything in between that led up to that escape. Was Anderson actually a good guy because he helped Kenji and Nazeera get to Oceania? Are Nazeera and Anderson allies? Can she be trusted and how did Kenji trust her after all this?
The last POV we have of Kenji is him being in a cell area like Juliette was back when this whole series started and to me it was very full circle, but also kind of like if Kenji was in this cell and rescued Ella, then he was in the Oceania compound, so does that mean Juliette was in the Oceania compound when this series started? How did Kenji even get there? Then Kenji gets choked and he felt like he was going to die and that’s it before they go to rescue Ella and Warner. And there was just something missing there for me. Like how did Kenji get out? Was Nazeera the one who choked him? How did they plan this whole thing and how did they conveniently get to Oceania to do this rescue when he was getting choked to death? I think that there’s so much gray area there that I didn’t fully understand how Kenji and Nazeera did it. I mean, the next we see of them was when Aaron was facing his father again and she came up behind him and was like don’t move. That made no sense to me.
Still doesn’t.
The Kenji’s in the hallway all alive and well like he wasn’t just getting choked and feeling hopeless. Again, just very weird. But I loved the reunion between the two and how they were like we’ll cry about it later and make a list 😂 Honey, same.
I loved the reunion between Aaron and Ella and how she broke down in tears, I broke down in tears too 😪. He called her love and sweetheart like no time passed at all and like they didn’t leave on slightly bad terms with each other before things went crazy. But I just loved seeing them talk things through and be there for each other. Ella kept apologizing to him once she saw him and I was like, honey, you have literally nothing to be sorry for. Everything that happened has been your parents, not you, so stop saying you’re sorry. Aaron was like “Love, there’s nothing to forgive.” You’re darn right. There was this moment where Aaron kept relishing in the fact that Ella was there and was his and how she still loved him despite everything—despite his sins and demons. And I loved that because Aaron just grew up with so much things that has happened to him and it’s not like he did any of those malicious things on purpose—-just a product of his dad’s creation—–so him just acknowledging that he’s not perfect, but learning to let that love in was just great for him. He used to feel like he would never be “good” enough or worthy for Ella because he was “cruel,” but Aaron is beyond one of the most loving people out there and when he loves he loves with a passion.
Caught it with all the chaos, he was going to propose because he knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Ella. When he was about to propose, you know who walked into the room?
Kenji!
Love Kenji. His humor was back.
I loved how he was like “not the time or the right moment to propose and Aaron was all angry at him and Ella was like, “What are you guys talking about,” and they both say at the same time, “nothing.” 😂 Nothing always means something! Super funny though. I also just loved the growing compadre and friendship between Kenji and Aaron. I mean, Kenji and Adam who? Joking, but not really. I loved how Kenji sat down with Aaron and they had that conversation where Kenji gave Aaron his blessing, but was like, aren’t you going to get her a ring and get down on one knee? The utter dumbfoundedness that came over Aaron was hilarious! It was so sad though that poor baby Aaron has never watched a movie in his life, but he only knew facts about famous people and pop culture. So he didn’t know what the whole typical proposal gesture was!! I mean who’s never watched a movie in their life? Kind of sad. Movies are great for imagination and escape. I just enjoyed their conversation. I also liked that part where Ella was like Kenji said you look good and are good at everything and Aaron had that big goofy grin on his face, dimples and all. I miss Aaron’s happy smile!
Well, he wasn’t smiling when they got shot out of the sky. Nazeera flew them down to safety because no one ever heard of a parachute on a plane. Crazy. That’s when we met Nouria, Castle’s daughter, who can bend light and who monitors this rebellion in the desert. Castle’s daughter was pretty cool and I admire her for starting such a big undercover initiative under people’s noses. I was also happy that everyone from Sector 45 was okay, but I’m still curious as to how they got there because the last we saw them Kenji fainted. Who knows? but I’m happy everyone was fine and we were reunited as one big rebellious team.
When in the compound, sharing a room, Aaron and Ella have a steamy moment that led to Aaron proposing again and was like marry me?
I was SCREAMING!!
Literally the next book should be called Marry Me or just Me, honestly if the next book was just their wedding, I’ll be fine 😆
Ella of course said yes and it was just perfect because Aaron did it his way—-without grandeur and it was a special moment between them after all the years wiped away from them and still finding each other despite it all. Aaron was like is this love? Is this joy? afterwards and my heart just swelled with a mix of happiness and a tinge of sadness that he didn’t even know what true love or joy felt like until that moment.
My ultimate favorite moment was the end with how Ella threw him a surprise birthday party. Well, not so much a surprise because Aaron was getting mad at her that he didn’t know what was going on. It kind of amazes 897me how the dad literally visited Aaron a day before his birthday and how so much has happened within the span of a day for them to finally be celebrating his birthday. I mean, they escaped, they killed, they reunited, they jumped out of an airplane, they got engaged. I mean what a day!
Aaron was surrounded by all the people in his life who truly did love him and he even had his own birthday cake with candles and everything! It was so cute!!!
“There’s tragedy and beauty in his eyes: something stoic that refuses to be moved, and something childlike that can’t help but feel joy. He looks, in short, like he’s in pain.”
(pg. 356)
My heart!!! Literally he’s choked up with the emotion of feeling loved from so many people when he never had that in his life and he felt pain for the same reason—–that he wished he had that kind of love sooner. And I loved how this just described Aaron in such an honest light because at the end of the day, he was literally 20 years old and to think he endured so much more before even reaching this birthday was beyond me! I mean, wow! So he deserved all this love and happiness and I loved how the ending was just about enjoying the good moments in life. IIt was about knowing to celebrate the little things, to be free for the moment, to have a birthday to celebrate, and to eat cake I loved how they were celebrating and living life to the fullest 💜. There’s this quote about how without pain, you would know no joy. They’ve been through the gutter and so much more and endured so much pain throughout the years, but here they were feeling all the joy they could because they had that pain to put the joy in perspective. That was what they were fighting for—-“a second chance at joy.”
I truly loved that.
Most books end with a cliffhanger, but this ending stood out to me out of all Tahereh’s endings because it ended on a good note. It kind of made it feel like this was the last book in the series, but there’s Imagine Me that’s coming out so it’s not. And there’s still a lot of things left unsolved that we have to fight for.
We have to know what Anderson’s next move is or Max (the dad) is up to. We have to go back to salvage and save Emmaline. We have to break down the illusion that this world is horrible. We have to reestablish the Reestablishment. Nazeera and Kenji have to DTR the relationship and Adam needs to still tell James that Aaron and him are related. And we need a Ella and Aaron wedding because DUH!
Looking forward to all the highs and lows of the next book and to see yet another great conclusion to the Shatter Me series. Bet there’s going to be a lot of tears, maybe some heartbreak, but a lot of love.
If you read this book, wha twas your favorite part? Least favorite part? What did you think about Ella and Aaron’s proposal? If you could title the next book, what would you call it? Let me know below in the comments as I love hearing from you all 💕
I hope you have a beautiful day whenever and whereever you might be reading this
And as always, with love,
Rating
4.68 Full Bloom Flowers
Characters: I loved seeing all the character reunite and get closer in this book. It was also interesting to get to see the twisted parents more. Here’s to knowing that there kids turn out twice the better people than they’ll ever be
Plot: An escape and lots of revelations behind what the Reestablishment is doing. Very quick to follow along with the action and the snippets to the past helped you understand a little more about Aaron and Ella’s shared history.
Writing: Another masterpiece with great perspectives
Romance: Aaron and Ella’s love transcends all
Action: Lots of very graphic scenes that were described perfectly and the escape scene was well done; it really makes you feel as though you’re right there with them