Shatter Me- Chapter Two- Yes He Can And Yes He Is

This chapter begins with a weird level of reliance on clouds.

Juliette has woken up from her position on the floor, because Adam is being an ass, and can smell the rain on the air. A rare science-y moment here (the benefits of being related to a microbiologist), the smell of rain everyone loves is due partly to ozone (which everyone knows, I think) and partly due to bacteria in the soil producing spores that rise to the surface when it rains. 

I'm sorry, I don't know where that came from. Get it together, Audrey, this is a book review, not a Random Facts Corner.

Anyway, for whatever reason, Juliette feels very strongly about clouds, as she says (and this was highlighted 430 times on Kindle, by the way) "Raindrops are my only reminder that clouds have a heartbeat. That I have one, too."
Ok, Juliette, you might think you're crazy, but don't tell me, or Adam, for that matter, that you only remember your heart beats whenever it rains. 

She wheedles on with some depressing rain metaphors, which I do actually love, because without metaphors I could never explain anything to anyone. 
Then Sire Douchebag wakes up and is "studying" her. Oh, Juliette, in a few days he'll be doing a lot more "studying", make no mistake. 

He asks her name again, she mentally spouts more metaphors. You know, maybe instead of synopses for each book, I should just compile the best metaphors, because there are literally hundreds. 

Anyway, we actually get a little character from Adam this chapter. He's still unreasonably pissed, considering he's questioning her while sitting on her bed, but anyway. He says "You're afraid of me" in that not-question way, and she's like, "No'mnot... (yes I am)."

There's food brought to them and he burns his hands. He snaps at her and she realizes that he's the kind of guy that gets embarrassed when he's not at his most masculine and stoic in front of a girl. Yeah, that's not going to get any better.

She has a metaphor about a white bird that actually kind of isn't-but that won't come up for a loooooong while.

And then...he touches her. 

"His hand.
On me.
2 tips 
of 2 fingers graze my cloth-covered shoulder for less than a second and every muscle every tendon in my body is fraught with tension and tied into knots that clench my spine. I stay very still. I don't move. I don't breathe. Maybe if I don't move, this feeling will last forever." You see why I want to go over this with a red pen?

Now this is actually fairly reasonable considering how Juliette has been raised. I'm gonna go ahead and spoil this. 

Juliette has a curse (or at least it is for now). When she touches people with her bare skin, it causes them extreme pain and, if contact is prolonged, death.

Without controlling it, there are only two people that we know of that can touch her without the pain: Adam and Much Better Guy. But we won't get to him for a bit.
Calling the other person Much Better Guy isn't to say that Adam and her aren't cute. But there's a very significant difference in the way Adam treats her and the way Other Guy does, and it's one of the reasons Other Guy is much, much better for her. He's not abusive or anything...damn, I can't explain this very well without spoiling everything.

Moving on, Adam, caring a lot more than he has been, asks if she's hungry, and she says no. But she recognizes his eyes, and writes "It's not him not him not him not him not him." 
It is. But that'll come up in a chapter or two.
She's writing the events of the day in her notebook, so while she's furiously scribbling with her broken pen, he asks first what she's writing and then why she won't answer. Adam, it's not like she's writing anything nice. While you asked her that, she was literally writing:
"These words are vomit.
This shaky pen is my esophagus.
This sheet of paper is my porcelain bowl."
Lovely, right?


She goes back to thinking weird metaphors and about the bird that comes up again, and then there's some sentences that make me have to reign in my inner hopeless romantic, sit them down, and lecture them very sternly about thinking the wrong couple is adorable. It's like thinking Meredith should have ended up with Finn and not Derek, for anyone who watches Grey's Anatomy.

"'Hey-'
'You can't touch me,' I whisper. I'm lying, is what I don't tell him. He can touch me, is what I'll never tell him. Please touch me, is what I want to tell him."

By the way, she doesn't know he can touch her without getting hurt; she's just speaking literally. Rest assured, Juliette, he'll touch you quite soon. Oh God, that sounds weird. I'm not going to delete it though, partly because it's kind of funny and partly because I don't know how else to phrase it.

This chapter ends with the signal for shower time. Oh boy.

Chapter Three should be out before next Monday and Chapter Sixteen of The Night Circus will hopefully be up in a day or two. Also, for YA novels I have a tested playlist that basically fits every romantic format, so I'll probably try to put that in soon.