Believe Me might have been Tahereh Mafi‘s attempt at redeeming herself for whatever bullshit she pulled in particular Imagine Me, but to me, it just served as proof that she lost all touch to her characters.

Don‘t take me wrong. I would pick Believe Me any time over Imagine Me. In fact, I don‘t think it‘s a bad novella overall. It just didn‘t manage to serve what we were truly craving, and since its existence is wholly to blame on fanservice. No one can‘t tell me otherwise. Like who promises their fans to finally have that scene they were screaming about … only to end it just a second before it starts? Well, but that‘s another aspect that I don‘t even want to properly discuss, because while I love Warner and Juliette, all I wanted is to see them live blissfully. And not even that was really what happened in this novella. Instead, we might have finally gotten the desperately wanted Warner POV, but he felt so out of character. Where did his confidence go? Where did his power go? And then, there‘s Juliette (I keep refusing to call her anything else) who knows Warner better than anyone, and does the one thing she must knew would hurt him? These two felt so much out of character, it saddened me more to read this novella instead of what I hope to fill me with joy.

Now naturally as a Shatter Me fan of many, many years (the original trilogy, obviously), I can‘t hate this one. For that I love the characters too much, and I shall forever try to hold onto the few good crumbs we get in this extension. Therefore, let me tell you: I enjoyed the good scenes between Juliette and Warner. This novella should have been that, again and again. I loved seeing them being absorbed into each other, feeling their love for each other. These two have been through enough, and this is what I wanted to see. I would have wished for even more scenes of them just talking - as they used to do in Unravel Me and especially Ignite Me. But I will take whatever little we got from them, and just ignore that Mafi decided to put in some unnecessary tension and drama - which, I strongly believe, was very much out of character.

Another aspect I did actually like was the insight into how the characters planned to rebuild their world, something that I was missing in the books. However, considering the timeline of the events, it made no sense to me for them to achieve already that much - or even plan an event such as the one in the book - some mere days after „winning“ the battle.

Believe Me just proved to me once again that the Shatter Me series is one of the best and worst out there. While the original trilogy and the characters will forever have a special place in my heart, and will always be counted among my favorites, the extended installements and later releases hurt me in a way no book could ever hurt me again. It‘s insane how strongly I feel for this series, in both a positive and negative way, and yet, I will feed myself every single Warnette crumb that is out there. In fact, shall I ever reread the series, I will stop at Ignite Me and just go on and read the good Warnette scenes in the other books. Thinking of them as bonus scenes, ignoring whatever else happens in them.