When We Wake Review

Title: When We Wake
Author: Karen Healey
Publisher: Little Brown
Release Date: March 5th 2013
Source: ARC for Review
Rating: 3

Sixteen-year-old Tegan is just like every other girl living in 2027--she's happiest when playing the guitar, she's falling in love for the first time, and she's joining her friends to protest the wrongs of the world: environmental collapse, social discrimination, and political injustice.

But on what should have been the best day of Tegan's life, she dies--and wakes up a hundred years in the future, locked in a government facility with no idea what happened.

Tegan is the first government guinea pig to be cryonically frozen and successfully revived, which makes her an instant celebrity--even though all she wants to do is try to rebuild some semblance of a normal life. But the future isn't all she hoped it would be, and when appalling secrets come to light, Tegan must make a choice: Does she keep her head down and survive, or fight for a better future?

Award-winning author Karen Healey has created a haunting, cautionary tale of an inspiring protagonist living in a not-so-distant future that could easily be our own.

Review:

Going into When We Wake I was very intrigued based on the concept of the book which is 16 year old girl named Teagan dying and waking up 100 years into the future. Right from the get go I picked up on what some of the major themes of the book would be; environmental issues and religion. The environment issues I found to be interesting, the religion... not so much.

The thing that I enjoyed the most about When We Wake is the not so hard to believe futuristic setting. The setting that Karen Healey created seems like a very plausible one that is plagued by issues caused by mans carelessness for our environment.

Fans of The Beatles will surely appreiciate this book as the chapters are named after their songs and their are countless mentions of them throughout the book, COUNTLESS. Maybe a bit too much for those (like me) who don't care for them that much.

I found myself really enjoying the characters, Teagan was an excellent voice to read the story from. The side characters were also very well written and long with the book itself. My only major complaint about the book is that I found there not to be a plot to the story until after 100 pages, which is almost half of the book. Once the plot did come into play is was full of fun things like conspiracies that will appeal to many.

Overall I did enjoy When We Wake, but it was not my all time favourite read. I do look forward to seeing where the story leads in the next book though.