When We Wake (Karen Healey, A&U)

Award-winning New Zealand writer Karen Healey’s third YA novel, When We Wake, is a taut drama set in an unnervingly realistic future world of rising oceans, growing populations, and dwindling resources. In 2027, 16-year-old Tegan Oglietti dies on what should be the happiest day of her life. But Tegan is given a second chance at life—the problem is, it’s 100 years later. Tegan is part of an experimental cryonics program, and is the first ‘freezie’ to be successfully revived after spending a whole century in a coma. In the strange new world of 3027, her survival propels her into the media spotlight. Tegan soon realises that things are being kept from her, and she’s determined to uncover the shocking truth. Healey’s previous novels cleverly combine teenage issues and supernatural themes; When We Wake, with its vision of a future world profoundly altered by climate change, feels closer to home, raising important concerns about how the way we live now may affect generations to come. Tegan is a compelling and believable narrator, and her story is full of moral complexities that are as suspenseful and dramatic as they are topical and relevant.

Carody Culver is a part-time bookseller at Black Cat Books in Brisbane and a full-time PhD student 

Books+Publishing pre-publication reviews are supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

Category: Reviews