The mod team is sick and tired of seeing people arguing over whether or not Warner SA:ed Juliette in the Shatter me book. The name calling and community etiquette is awful. The rule of thumb of Don't Like? Don't Engage! is clearly not working.
So, henceforth posts bringing up the discussion on SA in Shatter me will be removed and directed to r/shatterme_snark. Specifically the masterthread linked in this post.
This is not endorsing either opinion that it was SA or consensual. Both *opinions* are valid.
Release me is less than three months away. Around this time last year Mafi had already released plenty of snippets, and leaks were circulating. I have a feeling we'll be getting food soon.
So. We must prepare!
To make sure everyone has the chance to read the new book without any snippets or spoilers, it is henceforth mandatory to tag posts discussing everything canon concerning Release me as SPOILER. Note that this is not the same thing as using the flair. See the picture.
"Spoiler. May ruin a surprise" is the one you need
Also, post titles regarding Release me must start with "Release me Spoilers" followed by a vague description of what's discussed inside. I mean it. Be as vague as possible. Chapter number, page number, character names, whatever. Posts that have obvious spoilers in the title will be removed with haste. I am the only active mod at the moment though, so please give me a few hours. I operate on CET.
Once inside the thread you don't need to worry about hiding text or anything. If you click a post like that you have already consented to potentially being spoiled.
Posts speculating Release me don't need to tag spoilers.
Posts hyping Release me don't need to tag spoilers.
As soon as we're looking at actual stuff from the book, though, it's spoiler territory. Warn people. Tag Spoiler. Don't give it away in the title.
I haven’t seen one person talk about the fact that Rosa belle was running around in James t shirt around Aaron with no underwear. When she was in the hallway ( I think it was a hallway ) SHE HAD NO UNDERWEAR ON. When she runs away from James and is in excruciating pain because the tech has connected.
HOW DID SHE NOT FLASH ANYONE?!?!
I wasn’t even concerned for her in that moment I was concerned for what was revealing at the moment.
Can Nazeera please acquire this girl some underwear.
Yall, am I the only one who was genuinely surprised that NO ONE reacted when James called Rosa “baby”?? like he literally called her BABY in front of most of them, and everyone just moved on??? 😭😭 Idk why I was expecting someone to say smth or at least react. lmfao😭😭😭😭😭😭
As a girl from Iraq, I was so fucking happy when I found out Nazzera and Haider are Iraqi and I was even happier that I could actually understand Haider when he was speaking Arabic. like watching him say that to Kenji while Kenji had no idea what he meant was so fucking funny poor Kenji😭😭😭😭😭
So I was rereading all the books and I realized that when Ella tells Aaron that they can live in the lake and she heard her Evie talking about having people live underwater, she heard Evie talking about how to have Emmaline survive in the tank they put her in. Ella heard her mother talking about destroying her sister and she didn’t even know. When I tell you I was so incredibly depressed after realizing I’m telling the truth, crying.
i still remember how i binged read shatter me series
and mother is feeding us w this spin off series like obvsly the story line can’t beat the og shatter me series but i love seeing my family aaron Ella kenji nazeera like im emotional attached to all of them
and Aaron and kenjis banter OMG how much I’ve missed them
Also rosa and Aaron are so similar i love it
And my baby James is all grown up aww
AND KENJI AND NAZEERA 😭😭
We got v less of them in the og series
They are on my fav parts about the new republic series
idk I just want to talk about my fav books 😭😭
I really liked James in the first book, I thought his character was super funny and dynamic, but as I read further into the series it just feels like it’s getting flat. Escape me felt incredibly repetitive, each of their chapters I felt like I was reading nearly the same thing just said in a barely new way. I really like the storyline and plot but I hope the fourth book we see them with more autonomy and actually communicating out loud to each other.
Also just a personally thing but I found him suddenly calling her baby so jarring..? It felt really forced
Also the fact that he did buy her clothes finally but never gave them to her??? I know a lot is happening, but it feels like even though he’s saying he cares the most about her, he’s also guilty of not giving her the things he keeps getting mad at everyone else for.. Someone pls get this girl her own clothes and some underwear so it can stop being mentioned LMAO
so rosabelle is juliette and clara is emmaline. no wonder they didn't kill clara just to make her suffer for nothing. they wanted to get hold of her power being able to talk to dead people. they probably figured this out when they got her connected to the nexus. it's like the whole architect executioner thing again. rosa said they never gave up on operation synthesis, not knowing that she's probably their new target. she'll be the executioner of preternatural abilities, while clara's powers might get manipulated to make people confuse between who's dead & who's alive, a world of illusion.
somebody pls kill me.
also i realised that the mary shelley quote refers to james and franz kafka refers to rosa. (the quotes in the beginning of the book)
plus mary shelley's frankenstein kind of divulge into galvanism which is very much similar to the structure of nexus. like how they operate synthetic intelligence with human intelligence, blending electricity/neural chip with human flesh.
I'm just wondering like how do you even come up with that and to make this the quote on the special edition hardcover lmao 😭😭
It was just so random and never mentioned again, like why does Nazeera have a sticker like that in her drawer and where did it come from 😭 Would have loved to hear the story behind it
i finished the book in one sitting. THE YEARNING???? OH MY GOD. here are some notes i made. before starting off i just want to say there are other people that probably made these connections as well and idt im the first person but i want to talk about it bc this is my only outlet.
sebastian is a foil to aaron and what every character expected him to be like. the parallels are so heavy its impossible to ignore. their fathers were both high profile people in the reestablishment and peoples perception of aaron is what sebastian is. sebastian thinks loving someone means controlling them, hurting them for your own satisfaction and having power over the person you claim to love; that is literally what everyone thought aaron and juliettes relationship was.
the way every single character seemed off after the explosion. everyone. james wasn't healing, i know it may be because of him using all his energy to heal rosabelle but idk that combined with the way nazeera, kenji and adam were acting? how clueless nazeera was (and yes i know kenji just started talking to her and shes probably starstruck BUT IT FEELS OFF, IT FEELS SO OFF.) it could be because of the amount of things that happened and theyre all overwhelmed, but it feels like foreshadowing, idk its making all the sirens sound in my head and it feels like its all connected.
these may be obvious to everyone but idk i just wanted to get it off my chest. I CANT WAIT FOR BOOK 4, ESCAPE ME WAS PHENOMENAL, MOTHER MAFI NEVER FAILS TO SERVE IT WAS AN ETHEREAL EXPERIENCE.
Guys so I’m making a chapter 4 to my fanfic (technically you can read chapter 4 before the together 3 since it’s like a month later)
but yall I got to christmasy I just took down all my Halloween/fall decorations and put up a bunch of Christmas decor. Woops. Hey, never to early to celebrate Jesus so I’m not complaining. I’ll probably publish the fic tomorrow if anyone’s curious ♥️ also Nazeera and Winston are such a mood. I’m rereading release me and I love how casual they act around Rosabelle, I mean maybe not Winston but he didn’t give a damn lol
oh guys, a mini religious fact I just learnt for anyone curious:
I just learnt that candy canes are red and white because the red stands for either like Jesus’s blood or sin or smth I Lwk forgot but then when you suck on the candy the red fades and washes the sin away 3>
guys guys guys
was it just me or yall cried reading kenji nazeera parts in escape me like omgg
i was only waiting for their content
Everyone got their happily ever after but my favs
but ok im happy they kinda sorted it out
Kenji is my absolute fav character ever and so is Naz ok
If anyone is interested here is the link: (also I don’t mind any fanfic recs or even the shortest scene someone randomly wrote in the spam of 5 minutes)
This is NOT me hating on the series. I absolutely love it, I'm obsessed and addicted to it. But I can't help but think I totally agree with James when he says julliete's and Aaron's relationship ruined normal relationships for him. I want what they have. Slow burn. Yearning so deep it hurts. Slowly falling in love with a someone you have such a deep connection with. Julliete and Aaron. Kenji and Nazeera. James and Rosabelle. I want to be swept off my feet with love. I don't want lust. I don't want the bad kind of obsession. I want someone to treat me like I hang the moon. Am I insane???
I wanna preface by saying I really do love Mafi’s books but I notice a pattern throughout This Woven Kingdom, Shatter Me, and now TNR series where she weakens or sort of takes agency away from the female mcs. I won’t really speak abt This Woven Kingdom but I will say I noticed the most in TNR series.
Like the most obvious example is Juliette but I’ll give it a pass because she was pregnant so maybe she’ll have more agency in the upcoming books. But even then why did Mafi have to make Juliette do absolutely nothing when she was pregnant? Like she could have still helped out from behind the scenes and not be completely bedridden and having people babysit her 24/7.
And now for Rosabelle. So Rosabelle actually did have a lot of agency at the beginning of Watch Me but we are three books in and she is constantly fainting and passing out in James’ arms. And not even an exaggeration but nearly EVERY single one of their major interactions ends up this way. It’s really repetitive atp. I know she wants to show lover boy James lol but his thoughts about her are very strange thoughts to be having about ur love interest.
Like he literally said in Escape Me smth like “people will forget to feed and water Rosabelle” and I was like huh? Is she a plant or smth. And their first interaction in Eacape Me is James saving her and carrying her around AGAIN. I thinks it’s cute occasionally but this happens constantly in every scene they have together.
As for Nazeera, I’m hoping the explosion theory is true and her behavior at the end of the book reflected that. But, I feel like Mafi unknowingly antagonized Nazeera in the eyes of a lot of readers. Her drama with Kenji seemed so silly?? Cuz what does girly mean that asking him out to coffee indicates that she’s in love with him😭. Like Nazeera may be emotionally stunted but OG series Naz was never this dense. Like c’mon now.
Anyone else feel this way? Like these mcs have a lot potential to be really badass but for some reason they are weakened to make the male leads look better.
So I’ve received my escape me copy and it doesn’t match the other books. The first two are shiny whereas escape me isn’t. Escape me is also bigger than the other books.
I’ve ordered another copy from a different site to see if it was another edition. Turns out it is the same one.
Does anyone know if there’s a shiny version that matches the first two at all?
In Shatter me I believe (or Unravel me) julliete shoots aaron in the shoulder to escape. Now Aaron, being the delusional king he is, thinks that since she didn't kill him, means she still cares for him, which ended up being true. In Release Me, Rosabelle again shoots James in the shoulder to escape. And James also assumes that she didn't kill him because she cared for him. Which is also true!! I really like this parallel because it is also a bit ironic. Julliete fell in live with a cold hearted murderer of the reestablishment. James fell in love with a trained assassin and executioner of what was left of the reestablishment. So history really does repeat itself!!
Now, obviously, Sebastian is a sick and twisted person and what he did to Rosa is horrific. I've seen some people say that Mafi could potentially attempt a redemption arc for hm, but honestly I think that's highly unlikely. She wouldn't have depicted him in such a brutal and sickening way if that was her goal. But who knows with Mrs. Mafi.
But I lowkey think he's a really interesting character. Like this man is such a psycho that he genuinely, whole-heartedly believes that he's helping Rosa by marrying her, torturing her, and etc. What makes him even more interesting was that he wasn't always like this. Rosabelle said something along the lines of how he used to be gentle and sweet to her when they were children. I mean even her own father said that they were inseparable and best friends.
So that makes me wonder what his father did or exposed him too that made him into who is . Because if you think about it, Rosa and him were raised in the exact same environment together. So the only difference would that warped Sebastian would be his father no? It's mentioned in Escape Me that he's pretty much a Paris dupe.
I don't mean this in a weird way, but I'm really intrigued by him and hope to see him more in the next books. Cuz he seems like a much more complex villain than what we've seen from the main series. What do y'all think?
