Megan Rambles About Ignite Me

Ignite Me by Tahereh Mafi
From Goodreads: The heart-stopping conclusion to the New York Times bestselling Shatter Me series, which Ransom Riggs, bestselling author of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, called "a thrilling, high-stakes saga of self-discovery and forbidden love"

Juliette now knows she may be the only one who can stop the Reestablishment. But to take them down, she'll need the help of the one person she never thought she could trust: Warner. And as they work together, Juliette will discover that everything she thought she knew-about Warner, her abilities, and even Adam-was wrong.

In Shatter Me, Tahereh Mafi created a captivating and original story that combined the best of dystopian and paranormal and was praised by Publishers Weekly as "a gripping read from an author who's not afraid to take risks." The sequel, Unravel Me, blew readers away with heart-racing twists and turns, and New York Times bestselling author Kami Garcia said it was "dangerous, sexy, romantic, and intense." Now this final book brings the series to a shocking and climactic end.

Oh where to begin with this book and this series as a whole? I guess I should begin by saying that there are going to be some mixed feelings here as my opinion of this series has changed a bit over the years.

When I first read Shatter Me, I thought that it was groundbreaking, beautiful and amazingly written. Basically I thought that it was the best book ever. While I still think that Tahereh Mafi's writing is unique, I now found it a bit dramatic and there are some aspects of the story that I did not enjoy as much when I got to Unravel Me and Ignite Me.

I still love the core of the story, the part that tells the story of a girl who is locked up in an insane asylum and can't touch anyone. But by the time I got to Unravel Me I was more frustrated with the path that the characters and the story were taking. I still love this series though and I think that Ignite Me was an end to the trilogy that satisfied what I was looking for.

With that said, let's start with some of the things that annoyed me about Ignite Me. First and foremost, Adam. I've been team Warner since the beginning, but I was able to tolerate Adam. Even in Unravel Me he was tolerable, only occasionally annoying. In Ignite Me I found Adam to be completely insufferable. He was terrible to Juliette and I didn't totally understand the shift in his character. Adam became a very angry person and he didn't place any value in Juliette's strength.  Even though Juliette had some great internal monologues about her decisions when it came to Adam and Warner it was endlessly frustrating and felt a little bit forced almost like his change in character was supposed to force the reader to like Warner more than Adam.

I also found the plot to be a bit lacking. Ignite Me was more focused on the emotions of the characters and that was written very well. If I had been looking for emotional involvement in the book I would have found it very satisfying. However, I was looking for a bit more plot after the ending of Unravel Me. Because of this, the ending of Ignite Me felt rushed to me. The book was this huge build up to a battle that then only took about twenty or so pages to resolve. When it was resolved I was satisfied, but also couldn't help feeling that it wasn't the amount of time that I wanted spent on wrapping up that portion of the series.

Now, let's move on to the parts of Ignite Me that I did like because there are plenty of those too!

The first is Kenji! I freaking love him so much and he has been one of my favorite characters since the beginning of the series. In this book he not only provided his usual humor and comic relief but also the sanity of their group. There were many times when everyone was suffering from losses or when there were conflicts among the characters that Kenji was right there to break it up. I also loved his friendship with Juliette. He really understands her in a way that not many other people do and watching a girl who thought she was never going to be able to have any kind of relationship with anyone discover that she has a best friend was a beautiful thing.

Next we have Warner. I love, love, LOVE Warner. I mean, chapter 55 anyone? Seriously you can't not love him after that chapter. It was absolutely beautiful. Since I've been Team Warner from the beginning, I may be a bit biased, but I love how he is around Juliette. There was a lot of character development for Warner in Ignite Me and it really helped readers to understand his relationship with Juliette and his feelings for her. Throughout everything he believes in her and doesn't feel the need to protect her from the world. Instead, he wants to teach her what she needs to know so that Juliette can protect herself from the world, with him by her side to help. 

While I had a lot of frustration while reading parts of this book, it was just a fun read. I could read huge chunks of it in a sitting. Ignite Me was just entertaining, which is something that I have always loved about this series. I enjoyed watching Juliette stand up for herself and become kind of a badass at the end of the book. 

If you go into Ignite Me just expecting to be entertained and not looking for much of an in-depth plot or a book that is really thought provoking then I think that you will enjoy it. It was a fun end to an entertaining series. While I'm left feeling a bit bittersweet that this series wasn't as amazing as I originally thought that it was going to be, I still enjoyed it and would recommend it if you're looking for a fun read that doesn't require a lot of emotional investment.