Tahereh Mafi's Release Me, the second installment in The New Republic series has just hit shelves on April 7th, and fans are eager to continue Rosabelle and James's story after the explosive cliffhanger of Watch Me.
Watch Me ended with a jaw-dropping revelation: Hugo Wolff (Rosabelle's father) is working with Warner and is a former sector commander who defected from the Reestablishment. The book left readers desperate to understand the circumstances of his defection and how this tangled web of family loyalty would play out. Add to that the looming threat of Klaus, the AI surveillance system controlling Ark Island and a gene-editing virus designed to target the New Republic's citizens, and you had all the ingredients for a high-stakes thriller.
Watch Me was gut wrenching. The stakes were intensely personal and immediate, Rosabelle and her sister Clara trapped in poverty and sickness on Ark Island, with Rosa sacrificing her agency to keep Clara alive. The desperation was immensely visceral and we felt every moment of Rosa's struggle.
Instead of capitalizing on this momentum, Release Me spins its wheels for over 300 pages before delivering any meaningful plot progression. The entire book takes place in the New Republic capital where Rosabelle is held captive (some later bits in the Waffle), which paradoxically removes the stakes that made Watch Me so gripping. For readers of the original Shatter Me series, this location feels safe because it's run by the heroes we know and love.
We're not on Ark Island anymore. We don't see Clara physically appear even once in this book. The few attempts to remind us of Rosa's personal stakes, fall flat.
Here's the fundamental problem. By the end of Watch Me, Rosabelle had already decided from her own POV that she wants to get back to Ark Island to destroy Klaus and sacrifice herself. We know this. She knows this.
So, the core conflict of Release Me boils down to an exhausting cycle of miscommunication. Rosabelle won't talk to James. James won't listen to Warner. Warner won't hear out James. Kenji can't get through to anyone. It's a group of stubborn people creating noise that hardly moves anything forward.
Part of the disconnect comes from how Rosabelle processes the world around her and the people in charge, including James' brother Aaron Warner. She views Warner the way Juliette once viewed Paris Anderson in the original series.
The whole discourse, however, is still frustrating given what we know from her POV. Rosa doesn't want to hurt James. James doesn't want to hurt Rosa (this is repeatedly made clear). And Rosa obviously doesn't want to wreak havoc in the New Republic. So what is all this fuss and back-and-forth about?
Rosabelle has critical information about Klaus, the vial containing the gene-editing virus and undercover Reestablishment agents planning synchronized terror attacks across the continent. Everyone is screaming their lungs out asking for this information. Just tell them and spare us the dragging, dragging, dragging that goes nowhere.
The missing character development
James and Rosa don't exactly have a group yet. There are no major new characters in this spinoff beyond them and the OG cast. And here's the tragedy: the OG cast doesn't seem like the OG cast anymore.
Everyone — Winston, Adam, Nazeera, Kenji, James — is using too much forced humor every two lines, and half of it isn't funny or appropriate for this stage in the series. Kenji, usually a source of sharp wit and emotional depth, feels off. His humor lands flat, forced and unfunny. Nazeera seems like a different person entirely. The attempts to recreate the banter from the original series feel manufactured and lifeless. Juliette has minimal involvement. All our favorite characters have somewhat lost their magic.
The book attempts to make James and Rosa's attraction, their romance, feel central to the story, but it fails spectacularly. It's poorly developed and unconvincing. The entire book consists of Rosa being scared that she'll kill James and everyone accidentally while being badly injured herself throughout. Their chemistry was starting to go somewhere in Watch Me, but Release Me unfortunately couldn't build on that.
Shades of Paris Anderson in Aaron Warner, but still the best thing in the book
Aaron Warner is now the General of Defense, the iron hand of the New Republic, governing with an iron fist (he goes as far as shooting James in the leg — Paris Anderson says hello!). And yet, he's the sole sensible character in the entire book. Of course everyone's on his side. He's the only one making sense in the building.
Warner sees Rosabelle as someone whose temperament mirrors his own traumatic past. His instincts are correct, his caution is justified, and yet James fights him every step of the way. So, Warner's frustration is well warranted.
His POV chapters are few, but they're the best-executed in the book. We see the domestic man behind the general and the incurable romantic that he is.
Warner's exasperation with profanity, "Foul language is a cheap feast for an underfed mind," becomes a running gag, and his pointed observations about Rosabelle are some of the sharpest in the book: "You're going to get us all killed if you continue to believe you can take a wolf home and tame it. Maybe the wolf chose to leave you breathing, but that doesn't change the fact that it slaughtered your friends."
According to James, "Warner doesn't know how to deal with her! Their temperaments are too similar" — and that's exactly the point. Warner sees himself in Rosa, the damaged weapon, the person who had to be saved from their own programming. That's why he's the only one who truly understands the danger.
Little plot progression at scale
Plot-wise, there is very little progression. It's neither plot-driven nor very character-driven, despite seemingly attempting the latter. Worse, there are strange, jarring gaps between chapters. One chapter, the characters are heading to a fight. Next, they're in the aftermath of the fight. Someone decided to cut the action scenes in some crucial spaces, leaving readers disoriented and frustrated.
When Rosabelle finally reveals her original mission and the imminent threat to the New Republic, it comes in a rushed info dump. We're told the New Republic has been infiltrated, that undercover agents are everywhere, planning synchronized attacks. But we don't see this play out in a meaningful way yet. The book ends with what some people are calling a cliffhanger but feels more like drama. Rosabelle's fiancé Sebastian shows up to take her home. Scene.
The verdict
Release Me is a textbook case of middle-book syndrome at its absolute worst. If we said this book is all about fan service, it wouldn't even be true. The first book was gut wrenching and intense because the stakes were immediate and personal. Book 2 removes all of that immediacy and gives us little of substance to replace it.
It would have been so much better if Rosa actually was the evil badass master manipulator, master spy, executioner of the Reestablishment that they think she is. But she already had a change of heart in Book 1, and all the fun is ruined. After the final page, we're left exactly where Watch Me positioned us, ready for the real story to start.
Release Me is a disappointing follow-up that abandons most of what made the first book work, and leaves readers exhausted. I would rate it a 2.5 stars out of 5. Here's hoping the next installment shows us again why we love the universe and Mafi with all our heart.
Release Me is available now, wherever books are sold.