Title: Fracture Me
Author: Tahereh Mafi
Genre: Romance, Dystopia, Fiction
What It’s About: Juliette awakens in Warner’s room back on base, and Warner gives her the news that Omega Point has been destroyed. Juliette is angry–she feels robbed of her friendships, of her love, and of a future with people that she wanted to be around. She asks–no, demands–that Warner takes her to the location of Omega Point, to see it for herself, and together they become allies as they want the same thing–to destroy The Reestablishment, and kill Warner’s father. Warner reveals to her the reason he had her taken out of her cell in the asylum–his mom suffered from some disease where being in her own skin was painful. He wanted to see if he could learn something from Juliette, though he never intended to use her as a weapon–that was a ruse for his father.
He also reveals that he’s not as cruel a person as Juliette believes him to be–challenging her about her memory around the incident with the child in what she calls the torture room. It turns out that it’s a simulation that he had created for her in order to get her out of her shell–she had been scared up until then, refusing to use her powers in any way.
With the help of his most trusted lieutenant, Delalieu, Warner sneaks Juliette off base and takes her to Omega Point, where they encounter Kenji, who at first attempts to kill Warner as he is so completely taken over by grief at the loss of Omega Point. But Warner uses Kenji’s power to make himself invisible, and lets Juliette go. Juliette tells Kenji what has happened to her since her supposed death, and reveals that Warner is in love with her, though she is not sure that she reciprocates those feelings. Kenji takes her to the hideout that he shares with Adam, James, Castle, and several others from Omega Point, where she explains her plan to work with Warner.
At first everyone is resistant to it, because they do not trust Warner, who visits them at the apartment, but they at least consider it. The following day, Adam and Juliette get into a heated argument because he cannot understand what she sees in Warner, whom Adam considers a monster. Adam kicks her out, and Juliette is so shocked at the cruelty of Adam’s words that she calls Warner using a device he gave her. After some conversation, Warner agrees to smuggle Kenji and some of the others onto the base so that they can plot their revenge together against Warner’s Father. He leaves with Juliette, and they spend the night in his room, where she reveals that she did not declare that she loves Warner to Adam. Warner retires to his office as he has been doing since Juliette takes his bed–he doesn’t want to be close to her, because he loves her so much and is afraid that she will destroy him.
Kenji, Castle, Alia, Lily, Ian, Winston, and Brendan arrive on base the following day, while Adam and James stay behind, as Adam wants nothing to do with Juliette and the whole rebellion due to the near-death experience. Juliette explains her plan in more detail–they want to draw out Warner’s Father by taking over Sector 45 and starting a war in which they kill the Supreme Commander. She then points out that she will take over as the Supreme Commander and they will do what Castle had always wanted to do with Omega Point–Save humanity. With the plan set up, they set to work.
Juliette trains with Kenji daily to learn to control her powers from a distance, sharing moments with him in which she confides in Kenji about what is going on with Warner, and about her feelings–the more she learns about Warner, the more she realizes how deceiving his persona is. Kenji reveals that he had gone to see Adam and James since they arrived on base, and managed to convince Adam to bring James to the base and join them under the premise that Juliette misses Adam. Of course, Juliette is upset about it, and when Adam and James arrive, she breaks up with Adam for the last and final time, as she is not willing to put up with his insults and doesn’t want to deceive him. She realizes that she may have not loved Adam–but rather that they were both looking for something more, and falling in love with the idea of something more.
Due to the training, Kenji convinces Warner to take Juliette outside the base in order to try her powers on other things. Warner has the perfect opportunity to do so, because of his mother’s birthday. He drops them off at a field, and they agree to meet up in two hours. Two hours later, he doesn’t show up, and Juliette knows that something is wrong, so Kenji and her head out to Warner mother’s house, where she finds Warner crying in the corner of a room with an empty bed–his mother had passed away. When they return to base, she reveals that Warner has been right–she is in love with him.
As that week draws to a close, it is almost go time–they had already let everyone in Sector 45 know that they are taking over the sector– when the team is discussing the Supreme Commander–Anderson. Someone asks the first name of the Supreme Commander, and Adam reveals that the first name is Paris. At that moment Warner walks in and overhears this. Angry, he believes Adam is a spy sent from his father because no one knows that name unless they are close to Anderson, and is about to choke Adam, when Juliette intervenes, revealing that Adam is Warner’s brother. Both of the boy are in shock, though none more than Warner, and he manages to reconcile and extend an olive branch to Adam.
The following day, Juliette and Kenji infiltrate the ship where Anderson is supposed to be, but they get separated. Juliette does find the twins–Sara and Sonya–and they warn her that Anderson has a weapon that he is happy about. Juliette finds Anderson, and it turns out that the weapon is another person who has powers–soundwaves. She manages to fight off the sound waves, and kills both the person, followed by Anderson, who she shoots twice–once for Warner and once for Adam. She grabs Kenji, gets him to the sisters, who heal him, and then the four of them leave the ship, back to the sector headquarters. They have now taken over the sector, and as she shares a tender moment with Warner, they both know that there will be more people after them.
My Verdict: Wow. This series is getting entertaining. I love how much stronger of a character Juliette is, and how she’s had this epiphany that she wants more out of life; that she’s the one meant to be the leader. I also love how we’re seeing bits and pieces of Warner and Adam in very different ways than they have been up until now. Suddenly, I’m finding myself thinking that Juliette really does belong with Warner, and that Adam is not the right person for her.
I love how she’s standing up for herself, and deciding to fight for the people she cares about, as well as the Sector that she is in, in order to get them their freedom, because even though she hasn’t seen much–she has seen enough, and she doesn’t want anyone to continue suffering. On top of that, she’s able to unite two factions, who previously were not getting along, towards a common goal. Pretty impressive.
There’s a phrase that Juliette uses that is just chilling–“Fear will learn to Fear me”–and I think it’s so accurate. Up until now she has been afraid of a lot of things in her life–she was afraid to live, she was afraid to touch, she was afraid to do a lot of things, and so she had to learn to trust herself and to learn to fight back so that she could no longer be scared. There are moments in life when something is stronger than the fear, so it no longer holds you back, and in Juliette’s case, the loss that she has experienced and seen was enough for her to overcome her fear.
Suddenly, I’m really excited to read the next book in the series.
The Girl with The Red Backpack 