Destroy Me - Tahereh Mafi

If Merlin had looked into the Crystal Cave on my behalf and explained to me that I would not only fall in love with a book told in Warner's perspective but that it would also be the first book I would really review on my new blog... Well, I'd tell Merlin to stick to prophesying Arthur's future though that didn't always turn out so fun either.

So much has changed since I read Shatter Me back in December of 2011. I'm not even really sure if I'd love it with the same blind adoration I held for it three years ago. Has it really been three years? All the characters but Juliette are shadows in the back of my memory, and so maybe that's why it was so easy for me to look upon Warner in a much softer light. His dark deeds and the swoon-worthy elements of Adam have long since left my fickle brain, so that when I read my review of Shatter Me I fail to truly remind myself of all the lovable components of Mafi's story. IT'S BEEN THREE CRAPPING YEARS.

Destroy Me reminded me. Took great pains to remind me. In just a few pages in this new perspective, I remembered the stunning pain of Mafi's words and their ability to render me useless to the outside world.

It was obvious to me that Warner had some problems that potentially needed hammering out in intense family therapy, but it never occurred to me to feel badly for him.

But he was wrecked at a young age and like most there was no way for him to anticipate the collision, or the lasting damage.

"...Never forget that man you so eagerly serve is the same man who taught me how to fire a gun when I was nine years old."

He is viewed as cold and heartless and demented (that was my input) but he's bulding walls in [his] mind again. White walls. Blocks of concrete. Empty rooms and open space. Nothing exists inside of [him]. Nothing stays. Because

His hand shifts; lingers at my collarbone.
White walls, I think.
Blocks of concrete.
Empty rooms. Open space.
Nothing exists inside of me. Nothing stays.
His hand closes around my throat.

How

How can you remain ignorant of his torment then? How could I be stubborn enough to resent him his cunning manner, his obsessions, his mistakes when there's a real person suffering, dying inside? I could only do that without justification. And Destroy Me is Warner's justification. He asks for no sympathy, no pitying looks, doesn't beg anyone to see him, help him. But he has reason to act the way he does, cope the way he does, and that was how Destroy Me succeeded where Shatter Me failed.

Because it was a failure to paint Warner as a one-dimensional villain.

Now I understand how people could possibly be "Team Warner." I kept wanting to shout, GUYS. HE IS THE BAD MAN. But, oh, how it makes so much sense now. Why the idea of a romance between Juliet and Warner has such sway.

Warner understands her tormented days, the thoughts of the creature their society had reduced her to. And watching him feel for her convinced me more than a thousand of Adam's kisses.

I knock the notebook to the floor.
I'm upright in an instant, trying to steady my heart. I run a hand through my hair, my fingers caught at the roots. These words are too close to me, too familiar. The story of a child abused by its parents. Locked away and discarded. It's too close to my mind.
I've never read anything like this before. I've never read anything that could speack to directly to my bones. And I know I shouldn't. I know, somehow, that it won't help, that it won't teach me anything, that it won't give me clues about where she might've gone. I already know that reading this will only make me crazy.
But I can't stop myself from reaching for her journal once more.

And little by little, as he pieces together Juliette's days in the asylum, he doesn't realize how wrong he is. That her journal does help, does teach him something. Her words are acid raining down on his steel walls, opening him to a state of vulnerability, taking him to places he wouldn't otherwise dare tread for fear of resembling weakness. And this slow unraveling of his invulnerable facade is mesmerizing.

I can't control the easy laughter that escapes my lips; I don't want to. I haven't felt like laughing in so long. And I can't help but be amazed at the power such small, unassuming animals wield over us; they so easily break down our defenses.

All I want now from this story is to find hope for Warner in the end. And that hope for Warner's salvation is the only thing in three years that has made me want to continue to Unravel Me. The only thing.

rating: 4.5ish stars