Restore Me

Tahereh Mafi has officially convinced me that she knows exactly how to emotionally torture her readers. I have a bit of a mixed relationship with Restore Me, but by the time I reached the end, I was absolutely hooked. My biggest criticism is the pacing at the beginning. I actually started this book over winter break and ended up putting it down for months. The opening spends a lot of time establishing the political landscape, rebuilding the world after Ignite Me, and introducing the responsibilities that come with Juliette becoming Supreme Commander. While I understand why this setup was necessary, it made the first third feel noticeably slower than the previous books. Once the story finally picked up, though, I couldn’t stop reading. One of my favorite parts of this book was watching Juliette struggle with leadership. Up until now, we’ve watched her fight to survive and fight for freedom, but Restore Me asks an entirely different question: What happens after you win? Watching her try to navigate politics, command an entire continent, and wrestle with her own insecurities made her feel more human than ever. She isn’t suddenly a perfect leader just because she’s in charge, and I appreciated seeing her doubts alongside her growing confidence. Some of her moments were genuinely iconic—I clapped when she confidently introduced herself as the Supreme Commander of North America. Those little moments reminded me just how much she’s grown since the terrified girl we met in Shatter Me. And then there’s Aaron Warner himself. I honestly don’t know how Tahereh Mafi managed to make me love him even more. Warner isn’t compelling because he’s attractive or powerful. He’s compelling because beneath all the control is someone desperately trying to become better than the person his father raised him to be. His chapters are heartbreaking. Watching him carry guilt, confront his abusive childhood, admit when he’s wrong, and consciously choose kindness over cruelty made him feel incredibly human. Every revelation about his past hurt, yet every choice he makes in the present proves that trauma explains someone—it doesn’t define them. His love for Juliette is one of the healthiest portrayals of devotion I’ve read in fantasy. He doesn’t just love her strength—he reminds her of it when she forgets. He believes in her before she believes in herself. He admires her resilience instead of trying to fix her. Some of his speeches honestly felt like pep talks I needed to hear myself. Then there’s Kenji, who somehow remains the funniest character in the entire series. His scenes were the perfect balance against all the emotional heaviness, and watching him absolutely lose his mind over Nazeera had me laughing out loud. Their dynamic instantly became one of my favorite parts of the book. Speaking of Nazeera… Icon. Absolute icon. She’s intelligent, fearless, unapologetic, and every time she walked into a scene she completely stole it. The confidence, the sarcasm, the refusal to let anyone tell her who she should be—I loved every second she was on the page. Something else I appreciated was how this book expanded beyond romance. Leadership, responsibility, healing, loneliness, self-worth, identity, and learning to become the person you choose instead of the person your trauma created all became central themes. Some of the passages about loneliness genuinely made me stop reading for a moment because they were so painfully accurate. They didn’t just describe isolation—they described what it feels like to live with it. And that’s what makes Tahereh Mafi’s writing so unforgettable. She doesn’t simply tell you how a character feels. She makes you feel it. Whether it’s grief, panic, desire, hope, shame, or love, every emotion is written with such precision that you experience it alongside the characters. That’s incredibly rare. If I have one complaint, it’s almost ironic considering the title. This book absolutely did not restore me. It destroyed me emotionally, raised my standards for fictional men to an unreasonable level, made me fall even harder for Aaron Warner, convinced me I need every future pep talk delivered by him personally, and somehow left me simultaneously heartbroken and hopeful by the final page. Tahereh Mafi has officially become one of my favorite authors, not simply because she tells compelling stories, but because she writes with a level of emotional honesty and poetic beauty that very few authors can match. Her prose feels poetic without becoming inaccessible, and certain passages genuinely made me stop reading just to process them. Whether she’s writing about loneliness, trauma, love, or heartbreak, she has a way of putting emotions into words that feel incredibly vivid and memorable. The ending, however… What. The. Actual. Hell. Every few chapters I thought I finally understood where the story was going, only for another revelation to completely flip everything upside down. By the final pages I was staring at the book wondering how I was supposed to wait before starting Defy Me. The cliffhanger completely shattered every assumption I had going into the finale. Overall, while the slower beginning kept this from being a perfect five stars, the emotional writing, Warner and Juliette’s relationship, Kenji’s incredible presence, and the absolutely insane ending more than made up for it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to emotionally recover before diving into Defy Me.

So good, the character arcs are amazing and the world building is breathtaking

Jill- get’s better as the series goes on. Read the whole series.

Total cliffhanger

The plot twist ateeee! I’m like what else can happen? So good!!