I will admit that I did not expect too much from SHATTER ME. The plot seemed quite interesting, but most plots do and after the wave of dystopian YA books lately, I figured this story would be a nice read, but nothing special. I have to give it four stars, though, if only because every time I had to put it away, I REALLY wanted to pick it back up again and read on. 
 Juliette fights back, that's for sure, but she's not like most dystopian YA heroes. She is broken. She's a little strange and that reflects in the way the book is written, which I really liked. All right, yes, the romance is a little cheesy and it went a little fast (I feel like it always does in these kinds of books) but it didn't really bother me. It was also very sweet and both main characters were relatively realistic and easy to relate to, which definitely helped. Over the course of the story, more is slowly revealed about Juliette and Adam's lives, rather than that information being given all at once, which kept things interesting if only because you want to know more about what happened to them in the past and how they became the people they are at the start of SHATTER ME. 
 The story itself was good and well-paced; I wasn't bored for a moment, but I also didn't feel like it went too fast and the ending was open enough to keep the reader curious about the next book, but not so open that I found myself yelling at the book in my hands (as was the case with books from a couple of other series or trilogies), for which I personally at least was grateful. The villain is repulsive. I do have some suspicions about what might happen to him that I hope will not come true, because that would be a little cliche, but so far he's been intriguing and definitely gave me the creeps. (Although I did think that he was middle-aged for a while at the beginning of the book; he definitely does not act like a nineteen-year-old.) 
 I wasn't as impressed or drawn in as I have been by some other books or series in the past, but I'm hoping that will change as the series progresses. For now, it's enough that I really liked this book and I will move on to DESTROY ME right away to see what is going to become of the characters I just left behind.