Defy Me (Shatter Me #5) by Tehereh Mafi

Goodreads:

Pages: 352

Publication Date: April 2nd, 2019

Genre: Scifi/Dystopian, YA

This book was honestly pretty awful. I always thought these books were pretty bad, but for some reason I stuck through it. The first one was weak, but I heard it got better so I stuck through it for 2. Then since I was almost done the series, I read the third. After the 4th came out, I realized I made it this far. Why not one more? And the same thing for the 5th book. The difference was the 2-4 were okay reads. Not great, but enjoyable enough in the way Ex on the Beach or Scary Movie are. You know its bad but your kind of enjoying it.

This was just bad. Like Superbad. There's nothing redeeming about it.

The book is really a filler novel. I can't really tell you much that happened, aside from a bunch of flashbacks, an out of place screaming shower sex scene, a special snowflake name change and Anderson being back for no reason.

This novel (much like Cursed Child and ACOFAS) felt like a money grab to me. There wasn't enough to it to be a novel. I think this could've been cut down and divided into the 4th book and the 6th book. Maybe with a short story in between the two.

I'm not really sure why people are so into Juliette and Warner, but I know that's what's keeping it afloat. Suddenly there's this weird introduction that they have been in love forever. It felt out of place and thrown in randomly. It felt like I was reading a different novel honestly. The shower sex scene felt like it was taken off of Fanfiction.net and was up there with the time Kvove went to the fairies and the terrible sex scenes in ACOMAF for worst sex scenes ever written. Kenji and his weird romance that has no chemistry just felt like he was thrown a bone to make Kenji fans happy.

I think Mafi really liked Jaime's arc on GOT, because she literally did the same thing with Adam. He got redeemed in the last book and then in this book she made him awful again. No Mafi, everyone hated Jaime's arc and that at least was better writing than this was.

The name changes also pissed me off. It was like oh she used to be Ella, then suddenly she just was Ella. It was such a special snowflake moment and felt out of place and poorly done. I didn't buy it and it was really poorly done.

The writing didn't even feel like the same series. The first Shatter Me book had terrible purple writing and things constantly crossed out. Honestly it was awful and frustrating. It improved by Book 2-4, but this didn't even feel like the same writing as the other books. The whole book didn't feel like it was part of the same series and what did was just filler. Its also completely weighed down by flashbacks.

1/5

Maybe I'm too old for this series (and was from the first one) but I honestly don't get the hype about this series. I don't think I'm going to read the last as there's millions of better things out there to read.