"Shatter Me" by Tahereh Mafi

"Juliette hasn't touched anyone in exactly 264 days.
The last time she did, it was an accident, but The Reestablishment locked her up for murder. No one knows why Juliette's touch is fatal. As long as she doesn't hurt anyone else, no one really cares. The world is too busy crumbling to pieces to pay attention to a 17-year-old girl. Diseases are destroying the population, food is hard to find, birds don't fly anymore, and the clouds are the wrong color.
The Reestablishment said their way was the only way to fix things, so they threw Juliette in a cell. Now so many people are dead that the survivors are whispering war-- and The Reestablishment has changed its mind. Maybe Juliette is more than a tortured soul stuffed into a poisonous body. Maybe she's exactly what they need right now.
Juliette has to make a choice: Be a weapon. Or be a warrior. "-goodreads

I read “Shatter Me” in about 2 & ½ hours when I probably should’ve been doing schoolwork. I thought I’d start the book and read a chapter during a break in math homework and go back to what I was doing. That didn’t work out so well… I started Shatter Me and was immediately enraptured with the thoughtful, possibly crazy, progressively awesome heroine, Juliette, as well as the deceptively dark (or not as much as it seems? You‘ll see. Read it!) dystopian world she resides in. It was absolutely psychological, considering being locked up in a cell in contact with no other people for so long in desolate conditions, all while stewing over the fact that you do awful things to people by simply touching them-- whether she wants to or not.

The writing was another thing entirely. It was amazing. It kept me right inside the story until the end. It was also just really pretty. Then, there was the whole thing with Juliette’s thoughts and her confusion of a contradicting thought process with the whole words crossed out thing in thoughts…

I’ve seen Shatter Me referred to as a dystopian, a thriller, a paranormal, a romance combined with any of those things, and I’ll just say it’s all of those. Dystopian, for the world-- though I wouldn’t say that’s quite the main focus like in some other novels, there’s other things! Paranormal, because she can hurt people with only a touch ‘for no reason’. Romance, because there is another incredibly complex main character, Adam, and I think you can just guess that there’s going to be something between them (and their relationship, the lack there-of, and the general tension? Stunning.). Thriller, because I kept turning pages and found that I was literally gripping the edge of my seat at the climax and some other parts. Psychological, because inside Juliette’s head is a scary, twisted, traumatic place to be in a psychologically fascinating kind of way. And really? The other genre I’d put it in, and as number one: genre Awesome. Awesome in a real sense of the world. In an awe-inspiring writing, complex and likeable character filled, complicated and deceptive plot, dark and controlled world, sort-of-way.

Needless to say, (but I’ll say them anyway) two things: I cannot wait for the sequel, Tahereh Mafi is awesome. On that note, I’ll end this with the surprise third thing: the cover is epic sparkly.