When We Wake

3.75 stars

In 2027, when Tegan dies, she is only 16-years old. And when she awakes, it’s one hundred years later! Tegan just wants to try to live a normal life (or as normal as possible, considering she has to adapt to a new culture, and she is mourning the loss of everyone she knew), but of course, they want to study her, as she is the first to wake up in this study. Reporters also want to get their hands on her.

I really liked this; however, there was one thing that was quite unrealistic, I thought, very soon after Tegan woke up. The storyline moved forward in time quite quickly, but then, YA books often do. There is some discussion of social and political issues, and the most obvious change is the climate, and how people have had to adapt, and the effect those changes have had on people and countries. I actually liked how it ended. It left it open for a sequel (and there is one), but I feel like, even with the unanswered questions at the end, it could have ended there. I’m not sure why I’m ok with leaving those questions unanswered, but of course, since there is another book, I will plan to read it and continue the story. ( )

This is one of the first futuristic books I've read where the reason the future is horrible is global warming. I find it annoying when in creating "future slang" for teen characters, authors shorten lots of words, like "pharma" for "pharmacutical." No teenager is going to bother with shortening "pharmacuticals," a word that rarely comes up in conversation. The story is told from Tegan's perspective and it is interspersed with her talking to the reader. It isn't until later in the book that I figured out that Tegan was narrating her story in an online broadcast. These little comments ruin the ending half-way through the book. Not the best idea.


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From LMNet

Compelling and sleekly sick (in a bad way), When We Wake is a nightmarish view of the near future that will make readers think about the future of science, medicine, politics, and government intervention in citizens' lives.



Tegan Oglietti is having a great day. She's off to a rally with her politically inclined pals and new crush Dalmar. But what starts off as a promising day ends with Tegan's death! She is hit by a sniper's bullet and dies at the rally.

Tegan wakes up 100 years later in a controlled experiment. She has been chryonically frozen for the past 100 years. Her past is gone--her friends, her boyfriend, her parents, her home. She longs to talk to someone her own age. She begs the doctors to let her live a "normal" life. There are some people who aren't so pleased that Tegan has survived. They consider her an illegal alien--someone who immigrated illegally to Australia. The citizens believe she doesn't belong in her own country.



Operation New Beginnning is the government's attempt to save the future's soldiers. Tegan will make this possible, the doctor explains. Tegan is allowed to move in with Marie (the doctor) and begin to attend school. Her life is anything but normal as for her own safety she must always travel with bodyguards. There is danger everywhere.

Tegan and her friends discover the government's terrible secret. Operation New Beginning isn't just about freezing someone. It's got a darker side, and Tegan wants to uncover its dirty secrets and show them to the world.

How far will the government go to hide its secrets? Will it kill off its own Living Dead Girl? Tegan is forced to make a tough decision to save Marie's life.

Recommended grade 7-up. I liked that each chapter name was a Beatles song like "Yesterday," "Revolver," and "The Ballad of John and Yoko" and that Ringo is Tegan's favorite Beatle.

I'm not sure I like or hate this book, and that's the whole problem.

I liked Healey's writing style. It made me want to read the book, and I finished in one sitting. However, I felt the characters were too simplistic and the way she portrayed the many, MANY social issues was too hard; not to make people think, but to just push her own opinion on us. The usual people-who-believe-like-me are good, the-rest-of-the-world is bad.

I still kind of liked the book. I just wished I had felt something. Anything. ( )

Tegan lives in future Australia. Her main concerns are her music, activism, and her new boyfriend--until she's killed at an environmentalist rally. She wakes up a hundred years even further into the future, the first successful cryogenic revival of an army project. Some things are better: composting, recycling, and water saving are commonplace, while racism, homophobia, and transphobia are mostly gone. Plus, computers are teensy! Some things are worse: climate change has escalated, and resource disparities are increasing. And many things remain the same: developing nations still lack patented medicines, anti-immigration sentiment has risen, and the public is still only fleetingly interested in injustice.

After Tegan discovers a terrible scheme, she and her new friends have to somehow make it public, all while dodging religious extremists and the Australian army. I thought I would like this more than I did. There were too many plot contrivances--I'm supposed to believe a fourteen year old kid is offered a scholarship and thinks, "I'll start smuggling patented medicines through there"? And then is actually able to find all the contacts necessary to do that, without ever having been in Australia before? Tegan takes out various soldiers ridiculously easily. And worst of all, the Big Terribad Scheme that Tegan discovers is just...silly. The government has apparently been killing refugees and stashing them away so they can send them all into space to colonize new planets. That is the dumbest, most unlikely plan I have ever heard of. I believe a government would kill camps full of refugees. I believe a government could create a secret colony ship. But I do not believe they would give random, physically weak (some are children, and all were nearly starved) refugees first crack at a brand new planet. Why wouldn't they send scientists, farmers, soldiers, people who are physically and mentally trained, ready to colonize, and willing to send resources back to Australia? Sending a ship full of non-Australians that you've murdered sounds like the very WORST plan. ( )