4.5 stars

I'm tempted to rate this five stars, but I won't.

....
What do I even say about this book?

I'd like to, firstly, say that I love Warner, I have always loved Warner, I will continue loving Warner, and nothing anyone says can change that. He needs to be a better person -- well, okay. He doesn't need to anything, but if he really loves Juliette, he'd give being "good" a chance. Anyway, I think all the hate for him is ...well, not ridiculous, and I understand it's fictional character, but where does understanding come in? Why do not people stop and think about who Warner really is and why he does what he does? He's messed up in the head, alright? But so is Juliette (and I'll get into how pissed I am about things regarding her in a second). My point is that when a man is abused for all his life -- and Warner is a boy, okay. He's a fucking boy -- and then he abuses others like...what the fuck do you expect? No, of course it doesn't make it right. Of course he needs to atone for his sins and pay for them and actually show some remorse, but that doesn't mean he's a diabolical monster - just like Juliette is not a monster. Cut him some fucking slack.

Which is also why I refuse to allow myself anger at Adam for being such a fucking clingy wuss. Like, bro - a girl tells ya to stop, YOU STOP. But I love Adam, honest I do. But there wasn't much of him in this book and I appreciate that.

I wholeheartedly love every character actually - okay, not every character, but I respect who they are blah blah blah and Tahereh for making them that way. But I especially adore Kenji and James, especially together. Kenji is such a complicated soul, and so good at heart, and - yeah. I love him. A lot. And UGH JAMES!!! He's such a sweet little kid; such a fucking cutie, and I fuckin' adore him.

Now, for what enraged me...just...encompassed me in full-blown rage:

The way they treated Juliette, or at least in the beginning. Maybe it was what she needed? Maybe? But her moping - she was trapped in her head, basically, the way the prose is written is the way her mind works and I know - oh fucking God, do I know how that feels. My brain isn't like that 100% of the time, but a lot of the time I find myself trapped in my own thoughts, slip sliding piling across my skin and the knots in them aren't big enough to keep them from escaping and they're lined with salt and dreams and pains I've experienced and pains I might experience and I forget what functioning means. But in me it's not to the full extent as Juliette. I can get a handle on myself quite well, most of the time it's just background noise. 

But. Anyway. Yelling at someone to get a grip - especially when it's a mental thing that is very hard, if not incapable of control - yelling doesn't help. If someone is hallucinating (i.e: Suffering from schizophrenia) more than likely, yelling is not going to help them any. Or at all. 

It doesn't piss me off now, not as bad anyway, because I'm starting to realize that maybe - hey, they're trying to get her to face reality the only way they know how, not knowing it's more of a....brain-type thing, maybe a disorder if you will, than a choice. But also they take for granted -- they just assume she should automatically know how everything at Omega Point, and in the real world works, but she's been locked up and unable to touch people and yeah it wasn't for her ~entire life~ but practically it was because she was a monster in everybody's eyes and not touching people your entire life and not talking to anybody for a couple years has got to be kinda traumatizing. And yeah she didn't really try for those two weeks to...embrace their lives or whatever, but somebody should've tried harder. And not with yelling! YELLING DOESN'T SOLVE PROBLEMS, says the girl using CAPSlock to get her point across, because she is a hypocrite.

But anyway, I'll love Kenji no matter what, and I respect Castle (as a character, as a well-rounded, full-fleshed character) but they really don't know how to deal with people. Which is weird, considering they actually DO know how to deal with people? How floppy. Aka weird. 

....
I feel like I should delete all of that. I feel stupid, silly. I feel frozen. MORTIFIED. Ha ha.

So, yeah, the best part about these books is that I fucking relate to Juliette so hard. I mean, really, honestly, I have no clue what a life like that would be like, and maybe I can't relate as much as it feels I do, because really I've never experienced any of that - but it doesn't matter because it's a good book and the words flow over my consciousness and skin and I immerse myself so completely into the book/story/everything and it feels fucking great and I recognize the emotions and the phrases are phrases to which I can project myself and --

I just really, really enjoy the experience.

________

**(major spoilers)**

[ I actually threw the book when Adam said Anderson was his father. Like I actually THREW IT, and jumped up from my desk and paced away because fucking Christ, man. Fuckin' Christ.

And then when Warner and Juliette were all over each other in the high 300s - dude. It took me forever to read that scene, like literally forever. I was fucking dying of secondhand embarrassment. Christ.]