Defy Me

Introduction

Defy Me, written by Tahereh Mafi, was published on April 2nd, 2019, by HarperCollins Publishers. Published just over a year after its predecessor, Restore Me, this book is the fifth edition to the Shatter Me series. This was one of the hardest books to rank, and it’s around now that I worry I’m too generous with some of these reviews. I believe it deserves the rating I gave it, especially in comparison with the other books in the series, but it was absolutely a choice I wrestled with and had to settle into. Unfortunately, I wrote this review a long time after finishing the series, but I have done so including only the events of the past five installations, including this one. The Thoughts section will contain spoilers for those books, but nothing will be reviewed or revealed past the events of Defy Me.

If you want to learn more about Tahereh Mafi and her future work, you can follow this link to her website: https://taherehmafi.com/, and follow her on social media @tahereh.

Plot

With Juliette and Aaron once again kidnapped by powerful world leaders, Kenji and the remaining members of Omega Point must rally to attempt the impossible: getting them back alive.

Thoughts

We are finally getting Kenji’s perspective! I was hoping once we began to get more perspectives involved that it would be more than just Juliette and Aaron - though I would’ve been okay with that - and Kenji is the best person Mafi could’ve chosen to add. He still gives the best advice fitting of a best man, and his banter with Aaron is still phenomenal. I like that the two of them are always thinking tactically, as it serves as a reminder that Kenji is so much more than the class clown type he first appears to be. I especially enjoyed the chapters when he began to break down and open up a bit. I’ve been reiterating that I really want to see that side of him come out, and we finally started to get that here. Unfortunately, Kenji is only lucid for a bit of this book before he and what’s left of Omega Point get thrown into Juliette’s old asylum. Nazeera eventually gets them out, but things between them are strained. Before being taken, they both admitted to having feelings for one another but also agreed that they can’t be together because of her status as the daughter of a world leader and his as a rebel, despite Nazeera being a rebel herself. Honestly, I just want Kenji to be happy, and while I think Nazeera could make him happy, I understand his frustration with her.

Nazeera gets Kenji out, and they immediately rush to save Juliette and Aaron from Oceania, where Juliette’s parents took them prisoner. This is absolutely the most horrifying time Juliette has been kidnapped so far, but that can only do so much to take away from the constant repetition of this plot line. Juliette undergoes an incredibly painful procedure that should cause her to forget who she was as Juliette and remain only as Ella - which is the name given to her by her parents. Of course, the procedure failed, and she does a good job of pretending to have forgotten her past life. Even so, it’s impossible to forget what monsters Max and Evie are. It makes Evie’s brutal death at the end - although a bit scary in its ruthlessness that trends with the increasing violence lacing the series - a bit more satisfying for us and her daughters. In addition, for Anderson to force Aaron to have a hand in Max and Evie’s sick experiments on Emmaline from such a young age is horrific.

Speaking of Anderson, a big twist in this book is that he is still alive, as he was given the ability to heal quickly, not unlike James. I’m torn on this decision to bring him back. The plot twist honestly feels a bit cheap, but I did say earlier that I felt Aaron and Adam got robbed of their chance to have a confrontation with Anderson, and now they do have that chance. Aaron takes the opportunity he gets to stab his father in the neck and escape his cell in Oceania. Even so, Anderson survives the attack, and I can’t help but hope that Adam gets a go at him before the end of the series. As amazing as the attack was, Aaron’s imprisonment was not. He hasn’t been kidnapped quite as many times as Juliette, and I like that it allowed us to see him in action through his perspective, fighting the poison and thinking logically in a way we’ve always known him to be capable of but have never gotten the full scope of. Unfortunately, that storyline as a whole has been thoroughly worn out at this point.

Now, I will say that where I find the kidnapping plot to be underwhelming due to overuse, it did allow for a lot of memories to surface when Juliette and Aaron were unconscious. At this point, we know that they’ve known each other for their entire lives, and we know that they have always been close friends. But what is revealed is that every time their memories of one another have been wiped and they get to meet one another again, they always fall back in love with one another. In every circumstance, they come back to one another. There is no fate, destiny, or soulmate aspect here, they simply love one another so much that they always gravitate towards each other no matter what external interference there may be. I absolutely love it because it’s not something I see often, and it feels like a new take even though it isn’t entirely unique. And to make it more tragic, Anderson knew of their love and intentionally pointed both Aaron and Adam towards her, manipulating the events of the first book and creating the love triangle we saw - already guessing how it would end - for the sick pleasure he derives from torturing his sons. To me, this revelation is the strongest point of the book.

This book is incredibly difficult for me to rank. While the discoveries of Emmaline and Juliette’s true well of power were interesting, and the simultaneous heartbreak and elation brought by Aaron and Juliette’s memories were truly high points in the book, I cannot get over the constant use of the kidnapping plot device. It has been used at least once in every book, and I’m getting bored of it, even if this was possibly the most interesting time it was implemented. Unfortunately, that can only do so much to save it. We finally got Kenji’s perspective, only to have him heartbroken by Nazeera and empty in the asylum for a good chunk of the book. It seems that the book is relatively balanced here, but I did ultimately enjoy it, and more so than other installations. For those reasons, I have to give this one a tentative 9.2/10. I found it slightly more interesting than Restore Me, but it could only do so much to cover up its own repetition.