Wednesday, March 27, 2013

When We Wake by Karen Healey

Release Date: Out now! 

Publisher: Allen & Unwin

Pages: 291pgs

The Story

The last thing Tegan remembers is the crack as the gun went off, intense pain, and everything fading to black. One hundred years later, she wakes up. A fast-paced near-future romance. 

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 person to be cryonically frozen and successfully revived, which makes her an instant celebrity - though all she wants is to rebuild some semblance of a normal life ... 
including spending as much time as possible with musically gifted Abdi, even if he does seem to hate the sight of her. 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.

The Review

A big thanks to Mandee from VeganYANerds blog & the publisher  for a copy of this book!

I have pretty much enjoyed every single book Karen Healey has ever written and I found her new title, WHEN WE WAKE, to be quite an interesting tale as well. I loved the characters because I could relate to them. I loved the setting because it's set in my own home country which is a big bonus I find since it's rare to have Australia being the setting of a book. I loved the story because it wasn't over-the-top with its futuristic elements but rather combined a bunch of realistic issues that may - and still - affect us in today's society. And I thought everything just . . . worked perfectly together as a story. So overall, I thought this book was a very enjoyable read and it was something quite different in the dystopian-slash-sci-fi-like genre which I loved!

Now when I first met with the main character, Tegan (or as she is sometimes referred to as 'Teeg') she was definitely someone who had piqued my interest straightaway in the book. Not only was she very strong in a sense of 'trying her best to survive' in this very bleak and terrifying world and starting this completely new life of hers, while also being a very likable person in general, but as I followed her story along the way I thought she was an incredibly genuine narrator too and that's a very rare quality to find in a book such as this one. I really liked her indeed.

While the story was plotted out well and worked out as well as it should, but the only small issue I had with the book was the romance between Tegan and this boy named Abdi. I really liked Abdi - don't get me wrong here because he was great and all, but while, in a sense, the small romance wasn't the whole point of this book, but I just couldn't quite connect to the romance as much as I wanted to. I would've actually preferred no romance to be included at all. Still, in the end, I found everything worked out and I'm looking forward to reading what else Karen Healey has up her sleeve next. Hopefully some more from this genre because she's really good at writing it and drawing me into it all! Loved it!

Overall, WHEN WE WAKE was a delightful little book and I would highly recommend it to readers who love books with futuristic worlds, action-packed adventures, and pretty much anything else that has a special and unique quirk about it too!

The Rating
4/5 stars

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