Okay, I didn’t even know if I wanted to read Restore Me after finishing Ignite Me. Ignite Me has to be one of my favorite reads this year, and I literally ended up buying it. Now that I do realize that maybe I kind of do want to read a continuation of my favorite characters, I picked up this book from my library. And I had high hopes. I wanted this to be my favorite book, but of course it just wasn’t great. I guess that maybe some of my liking towards the book came from how much I enjoyed the previous books in the series, but it was not good. I mean, Warner is okay throughout the book, but Juliette was literally the worst character. All she did was complain and whine about her relationship issues, while the entire world was basically in shambles. What happened to the character that was actually starting to develop throughout the first three books? Well she’s gone.
More on the characters. Warner wasn’t bad, but he was all broken from Juliette so he needed a lot of help. He kept on getting all emotional about Juliette, and I got really confused about how they can go to having a somewhat okay relationship to it all being destroyed for no reason. Warner suddenly becomes different in the beginning of the book, and honestly, he’s all a mess as of right now. If Warner was bad, then I don’t even know what Juliette was. I don’t even know about how I could stand her throughout the entire book. After a huge missing piece of her past gets thrown at her about her parents being adopted and whatever, she became stupidly emotional about everything, running around and throwing her emotional issues at everyone standing in her way. I don’t even know how anyone could stand her without feeling like throwing themselves out of a window in frustration. Like I’m surprised at how sane Kenji is after everything he’s been through. It’s as if you took the Juliette from Shatter Me, dumped a bunch of emotional issues on her (tacked on to her already prevalent parental issues), and slammed her in Restore Me.
I kind of wish I did see more of the other characters in this book. Adam and James are only there for a few lines of the book, either to talk about emotional issues (what a surprise) or to awkwardly hug Warner as he’s crying over emotional issues (once again). I mean, they weren’t the best characters, but it would have been a good break to hear more about them compared to an entire book on Warner or Juliette. Also, Castle is literally just there. It’s like the author had no reason to put them in other than to dump a load of top secret information on Juliette. I don’t remember him doing anything else besides that. As with the new characters, they were okay. They were kind of forced into the story, and really served no purpose to the story. All they basically did was introduce a new friendship, which has no development and is almost completely meaningless at this point.
I feel like if there was a plot, it was hidden under all the annoying characters. I mean it’s obviously about the war, but everything was so focused on Juliette and Warner, that nothing happened until the last few chapters of the book. Even then, everything is so sudden and almost out of nowhere. One moment Juliette and Warner are dealing with their emotional issues, and the next moment Juliette gets captured I think, but then again I probably could have paid attention more.
Maybe the one thing that had potential was the multiple perspectives. I was really excited to see into Warner’s head, besides Juliette’s perspective, which we have encountered for the first three books. I think that if this was a better book, it would have been really interesting to see his thought processes. I’m not sure if I hated this book because it was truly bad, or if I had higher expectations. I really wanted this to be like Ignite Me, but it just wasn’t for me in the end. I might try reading the 5th book when it does come out, and I hope it becomes a redemption for me, because I really liked the story and concept.
Overall, if you wanted to read Shatter Me, I advise you to do so, because it was actually a good series that progressively got better. However, I do tell you to just skip this book altogether, because really, it’s all just a waste of time. You’ll just be better off in the long run. I wasn’t sure how much I should push this book down, but I was feeling kind so I rounded up to a 3 star.