Juliette goes on and on and on in the most emo-tastic way about how horrified she is over watching that guy get shot last chapter.  I’m…torn.  Yeah, it’s a horrible thing to witness, but she just acts so shocked by it, and this after telling us that she spent a year listening to kids scream in a torture prison, and also after her blathering on about how terrible death-y the world is in general.  One would think she’d be used to this, and it’s not like Fletcher’s death was particularly gruesome.  Yeah, she can feel bad and disoriented about it, and she should, but this particular flavor of freaking out feels disconnected with the setting.  Like she’s a normal girl from our reality reacting to it, not someone from her own reality.

Warner tries to remind her that she is, in fact, in a dystopian novel, then tells her to go eat something and get some rest.  Juliette cares for none of that and just asks after Adam.

You know, we’ve been getting a lot of righteous indignation from Juliette on stuff, and I assume that’s supposed to be part of some personality for her.  But she just keeps continually bringing stuff around to Adam.  See, getting mad about shooting people in the face is rather normal.  Not liking it when people try to bribe you into using your magic touch for torture is normal.  (Well, the not liking part, at least.)  Saying that these things define her personality is like saying “that guy likes his friends,” or “that girl puts shoes on when she goes outside.”  Yes, and?  Doesn’t everyone?  But the only thing she’s done that’s indicative of her own particular cares and priorities is ask after Adam, so in a sense, that’s the biggest thing we’ve got on her personality.  She’s metaphor-heavy, and she’s obsessed with a boy.

I’m feeling stupid. I’m feeling brave because I’m feeling stupid. My words wear no parachutes as they fall out of my mouth.

Well, I’ll agree with part of that statement.

Juliette and Warner have a bit of a spat about her gift/curse, and Warner shows more character in a few paragraphs than we’ve gotten out of Juliette this entire book so far.

“Disease?” He rushes forward, abruptly impassioned, and I struggle to hold my ground. “You think you have a disease?” he shouts. “You have a gift! You have an extraordinary ability that you don’t care to understand! Your potential—”

“I have no potential!”

“You’re wrong.” He’s glaring at me. There’s no other way to describe it. I could almost say he hates me in this moment. Hates me for hating myself.

“Well you’re the murderer,” I tell him. “So you must be right.”

His smile is laced with dynamite. “Go to sleep.”

“Go to hell.”

He works his jaw. Walks to the door. “I’m working on it.”

Eh, perhaps I was a bit too hasty about Juliette, too.  She’s stubborn and talks back in a particular way, which one could argue is particular to her personality and more specific than just “doesn’t like the things that no one likes.”  But she still pales in comparison to Warner in this bit.  He’s showing off his priorities, his thoughts on specific people and situations, and thoughts about himself that are identifiable instead of coocoo.

Plus, “I’m working on it.”  Warner gets shit done.  Juliette may share the “I’m doomed” mentality, but all she does is compose poetry on the subject.  She doesn’t seem to be trying to accomplish anything on her way out.

Juliette continues her freakout by going on about her nightmares.

It’s like the universe is getting me back for all that stuff I said about Katniss being a sociopath.  “You want someone to be affected by trauma?  WELL MEET JULIETTE!  SHE NEVER MET A TRAUMA SHE WASN’T WILLING TO FULL EMBRACE AND METAPHOR TO DEATH! :D”  Yeah, I want characters to be affected by the world they’re in and the experiences they go through.  But if that’s all they do, if they don’t also have a story that they’re participating in and goals and drives and desires and actions, then it’s not a book.  It’s a character study.  And it should be written better than this.

So Adam comes in and sleeps on the floor with her in this sorta sweet version of no-touch cuddling and that magically fixes all of her nightmares.

By the way, being affected by surroundings?  Doesn’t really count if the cute boy makes it all better instantly.  Now she’s not being affected by trauma, she’s just delivering an overwrought romance set up.

I glance at the clock on the wall and wonder what it means to be living according to numbers again. I wonder what 6:30 in the morning means in this building.

I wanted to pull this out because, in a book full of meaningless lines, this one actually works.

The next morning she goes to the bathroom and, oops, Adam is there with no shirt on!  He’s covered in bruises, because we already knew he was injured, why are you treating this like new information?

“Juliette.” His voice hugs the letters in my name so softly I die 5 times in that second.

God, could you be any more of a teenager?

Juliette starts to talk, but Adam stops her.  He turns on the shower for sound cover, and the book tries to express how tense things are by seriously piling on the purple prose.  It backfires, though, because instead of feeling tense I just start skimming. 

Adam’s big news is that he can touch her and not go all jerky-painy-soul-sucky-whatevery.  He touched her the first night in the prison/asylum cell, before he knew he shouldn’t be able to, because she was screaming in her sleep and he wanted to calm her down.  So he gives her a hug, and for the first time in this book, I don’t really mind Juliette’s overwrought narration.  I mean, if I were being hugged for the first time since ever, I’d probably break down, too.

Also, it doesn’t last terribly long, so that helps.

Adam says he’s going to get her out, but not yet, so she has to keep playing along.  Great, she just sort of floats along in this place, not wanting to be there but having no thoughts about leaving, until a boy comes along to promise to prison break her.  Haven’t seen that before. /sarcasm

The he quite randomly strips his shirt off.  (He’d put it on since she came in and saw his bruises.)  No idea why he took it off.  There was no lead up to that, no indication that he’d need to for any reason, nope, just sudden strippy times.

He, of course, has the same muscle-toned chest as every other dude in books like these.  I think they all share the same chest.

Do authors not know how hard that is to get?  You have to specifically work out for tone and definition.  If you’re just working out for fitness, it doesn’t come out like that.

I’ve seen lots of chests at the gym.  None of them looked like a magazine model.  Well, there was that one guy…

…I’m back.  *ahem*

Anyway, he’s got a tattoo of a bird on his chest.

A white bird with streaks of gold like a crown atop its head.

Which is the same line she’s been repeating to us every time she imagines that “maybe I’ll see a bird fly today.”  So…the significance of that is…?  Oh, I see, you’re not going to wonder about that, just blather on about hugging until the chapter ends.

Whatever.