Time travel. Dystopian end of the world. Rewritten familiar narratives. Questioning and twisting gender roles. I tell you, this book is going to be on my top 10 list for 2021, I can feel it.

The year is 2083. Jules is estranged from her family, and the love of her life Romeo is in a coma. And around her are only a handful of families, who have chosen to stay where they are rather than jump forward in time, the only direction they’re able to time travel, in search of a better life.

But then Ellis arrives – a mysterious time traveller, with a mission to wake Romeo, and Jules starts to question everything she knows about life and love.

I was expecting the Romeo and Julietesque nature of the narrative, but what I wasn’t prepared for was just how cleverly this would be woven through this fantastic novel by Kathryn Barker. R&J is my least favourite Shakespearean play, and I loved that all the things that annoy me about it get teased out and explored in Waking Romeo. I also love that one of my favourite pieces of classic literature also plays an important part in this impressive novel – I’d guessed at it when a certain character first started referencing his backstory, and was thrilled to discover I was right … but no spoilers. You should really read this yourself. It’s a powerful piece of work that can’t easily be defined by genre or the bounds of an Instagram description. I read this in one sitting, and it’ll be a book I return to in the future, I’m sure (pun intended!)