This was an interesting retelling with a sci-fi twist that I was not expecting. Normally retellings of Romeo and Juliet tend to not be the most interesting or captivating but this book kept me curious throughout the whole thing. One issue I had with the book was the pacing seemed a little off and sometimes went too quick to fully grasp what was happening. The aspects that were the most interesting was the link to history and how that changes things for the world around Jules and makes you think as a reader things that we need to change in our own world.

I fully recommend for someone looking for a retelling that is offering a change to the basic story and if you love time traveling novels that can get a little complex this is the book for you!

I really thought that I was going to enjoy this book. It's a bit different than what I usually read. But I have hope that I will enjoy this book.
I really disappointed myself when I thought I would enjoy this book. I should really stick to my preferred genre because I immediately did not enjoy this book from the start. It had so many different aspects to it that I got myself confused from chapter to chapter. I had to keep rereading it in order to flow the story, which I still don't get.

Generally a good book, kept my attention. The story was great, characters well thought out, and the pacing was good. Overall, I enjoyed the book and would read more by this author!! Thank you so much for the ARC!

Waking Romeo was a cute sci-fi Romeo & Juliet retelling about time travel (and if you know me, you know I love time travel). I enjoyed this very much! Hope to read more from Kathryn Barker soon!

This was exactly what I was expecting. I did have a few misgivings, but those quickly went away. The story of Romeo and Juliet steers the plot, but Wuthering Heights also plays a large part. I am much more familiar with the former (as most people are), but I'm sure fans of Wuthering Heights would identify even more those aspects from that book.

I’d highly recommend picking this one up!

Okay, there is a lot going on with this story. I thought it was supposed to be a re-imagining of Romeo and Juliet, which it is kind of, but the author mashed up Wuthering Heights and a lot of Sci-Fi into the mix as well. Which was somewhat of a turn off for me, because if you know me, I absolutely HATED Wuthering Heights and I might have not picked this story if I had known that.

The good news though, is that I did choose to read this story and as weird as all that sounds it actually kind of works out. The plot is very original, and while I did get confused at some parts because there was so much going on, I actually liked the ride for the most part. The ending was my absolute favorite because it made you go, oh dang this all makes sense now and at the end of the day, the Wuthering Heights part didn't bother me at all. Still don't like that story, but it worked well with this book.

Barker has included some interesting elements here. The Romeo and Juliet framework turned out to be a bit of an unnecessary diversion, a complication that took up unnecessary space. More interesting is the approach to time travel. We see the destructive power of time travel. That can only be interesting for so long, though. The excessive complications of time travel and chaos in the world with constant nods to Shakespeare were a bit tiresome after a while. It's a book I'd recommend only to serious sci-fi fans.

MY FIRST 5 STAR READ OF 2022!

Damn. What a RIDE. I seriously could not put this down. I started it this afternoon and just finished it at midnight. I wouldn't consider it a short, quick read either. It's just one of those I-need-to-know-what-happens-next stories.

I'll tell you right now - this book is definitely not going to be for everyone. If you don't love time travel, Romeo & Juliet, AND Wuthering Heights, it most likely isn't for you. However, if you're like me and immensely love each of those three things, I really do think you'll love this as much as I did.

Let's start with the time travel dilemma itself. I haven't seen this kind of problem in a sci-fi book before - time travel exists, but you can only move forward so it becomes a problem of people jumping too far ahead too many times and leaving practically no civilization behind to keep the world moving. There need to be "settlers" who stay in the time they're in to save the world.

There are a lot of mind blown moments here with time jumping over itself and present people meeting past versions of people they know and vice versa. It's a time travel story. It's gonna happen. It's a lot to wrap your brain around, but I just loved all the details and how they all wrapped up in the end.

The best thing in here is the romance. It's the catalyst for everything. I've reread the blurb multiple times to make sure I wasn't stupid and just completely missed something. I loved that I didn't know going in that this was the bulk of the story so I want you to go in blind too.

Oh man. You know how you read a wonderful book and you have that exhilarating feeling afterwards? I'm feeling that right now. I don't know how I'm supposed to get to sleep now.

My book club is going to read this as our September 2022 pick. You can bet I'll reread this when the time comes.

i think one of my biggest turn offs from this book was how they talked about romeo and juliet. like, i'm all for taking these known characters and kind of flipping them to be something new and fresh, but i feel like this was just completely different. like juliet was kind of snobby and honestly a bitch. where now romeo was this massive asshole and dick. like, i think it was kind of annoying, like i feel like this was the authors way to make this book different from the source materials.

besides that, i feel like this is just some really weird mashup / fanfic of romeo and juliet and wuthering heights. like, while i was reading this book, it honestly felt like the author had no real ideas, and that most of this book was just trying to figure out how to combine these two different ideas into a book that made somewhat of sense, which i guess was where the robots and time travel came into this book. like, i feel like it was so random and literally made no sense to me. like i feel it just didn't fit with the topics at hand and should have honestly been scrapped.

another thing i didn't like was the romance. like, i'm a big romance fan and i honestly really love to read it and is my go to genre. but, i feel like the book had terrible romance and that the romance was so terrible. like i feel like this book was just such a shit show, and that they tried to fit it, and failed, by adding this romance. but, i feel like the chemistry between these characters was literally non existence and i really didn't think it worked at all.

Waking Romeo by Kathryn Barker piqued my interest as it was a futuristic, dystopian, loose retelling of Romeo and Juliet with a splash of Wuthering Heights mixed in. Yes, that is a lot to fit in to a book under 384 pages, but amazingly, it was done.

I really liked this book, however it took a lot of concentration and suspension of reality. I’m a fan of time travel and am always looking for something different to read. This definitely checked the box in that regard, yet there were times I had no idea what was going on. Of course, as I plowed along, things started to come together and suddenly made perfect sense.

For fans of YA fantasy and retellings of classics, I think you’d be able to dive right in and enjoy. For those of us looking to expand our reading repertoire and go out of the box, I’d definitely give this a try. Successfully written storyline and after finishing, was definitely glad I read it.

I'm not sure what I thought this book would be, but I can confidently say that it surpassed all of my expectations.

In this book, we meet Ellis, a time traveler from the past, but also the future, and Jules (Juliet), a teen suffering the grief of Romeo being in a coma after he believed Juliet to be dead. Two years after this unfortunate event, Jules still hasn't moved on, Romeo is still in a coma, and life is bleak. Once people realized they could move forward in time (but not backwards...they haven't figured that part out yet), they left, leaving the world in a state of desertion and disarray. After Ellis is given a mission, Wake Romeo, and he finds Jules, and together, they fly through time in order to do just that. But as Ellis gets to know Jules, he starts to fall for her. But how can she love him back when she is already promised to another?

In my opinion, time travel is either done really well, or really poorly--there's no real in between. This book does time travel so beautifully. It made sense to me. And even through there was a lot of timey-wimey stuff going on, it all worked together in a way that just made sense. And my literature-loving heart totally ate up all of the allusions along the way.

One thing I talk a lot about in reviews is the world-building. I think this aspect of any novel is so important, and again, I totally believed I was living right alongside the people in this book. Kathryn Barker did such an awesome job with this book, and it is one of the only time-travel books I've ever enjoyed reading. I can't wait to talk to teens about this book, especially since they have to read Romeo and Juliet in high school, and this book is such a fun speculative work about what happened after the curtain fell. Loved it!

An interesting twist on Romeo and Juliet with time travel. A book I'd recommend to high school students.

I don't know. I love retellings. I love time-travel. So together they should be amazing. And I'm sure they are. Waking Romeo immediately drew me in but the timeline and the story are really confusing to me at the moment so I am temporarily putting this book aside to pick up at a later date.

Thank you for the opportunity to read and review Waking Romeo.

Romeo and Juliet – but in space, with the addition of some Wuthering Heights thrown on top of the pile.  That’s the theme of Kathryn Barker’s Waking Romeo, which plays with and modernizes the play’s tropes.  It’s dizzying, it’s messy, but it’s nonetheless compelling because it’s fun and inventive.  Overall, the book will likely please the youngsters who read it.

It’s 2083, and eighteen-year-old Juliet – Jules - Capulet and Romeo Montague are still suffering in the wake of their forbidden love affair.  While Romeo is in a coma, Jules survived the suicide attempt which injured him and it’s left her with severe scarring and an arm that is numb.  His parents blame her for the accident, her parents have remained distant, preferring to join the rest of the world in fleeing from the dystopian present by indulging in some pod-based time travel, and she spends her days and nights beside his bed, waiting for him to awaken.  While humanity has mastered the art of moving through the centuries, they have only figured out how to leap forward instead of backwards.

Then all at once, a mysterious visitor from the past appears. He informs Jules that his name is Ellis, that he is a doctor, that only he and his friends have mastered the technological ability to travel forwards and backwards in time.  Oh, and his latest, AI-delivered mission is waking Romeo from his coma. Thanks to the time traveling of other people, the far future has become a wasteland.  Waking Romeo will prevent the destruction of humanity as they know it.  Jules and Ellis jump back and forth through time trying to fix the future – and develop feelings for one another along the way.

Waking Romeo is dizzying.  Dizzying in a good way, but dizzying nonetheless, in a way that is properly ambitious.  People are going to be confused by this book, but they’re also going to like it, because Ellis and Jules are interesting people to follow, and their friends – Rosaline, Tybalt, Paris, and Frogs, Ellis’ AI, are, too.  I felt great sympathy for the complicated monster that was Jules’ mother as well.

The complicated romantic entanglements going on here are also fascinating.  Jules has a loyalty to Romeo, but she feels attracted to Ellis, who may or may not be the basis for Brontë’s Heathcliff.  This is Jules’ growing up story – she turns from romance-obsessed teenager into a growing woman and has to learn to let go of the fairytale that’s been built around her.  And there are multiple messages – about living in the now, about climate change, about how love isn’t the only reason for a woman to exist on the planet.

But the story can become confusing if you’re not paying careful attention.  The book bounces between Ellis’ and Jules’ PoVs and between three entirely separate time periods.  Add in things changing because they have futzed with the timeline and you have a pretty messy situation that must be read with care.  But if you do read it with care, older teens and young adults will likely take quiet a shine to Jules, Ellis, and their twisty tale.

Waking Romeo is quite a rich concoction, but definitely one worth indulging in.

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It's a good one, but it's not my type of book. I was expecting to like because I liked the synopsis but it didn't affect me.

4.5 stars

Time travel adventure + Shakespeare retelling + a little star-crossed romance = one very happy reader.

If you are looking for something different from the Young Adult genre, look no further than Waking Romeo. Not only does it combine all of the aforementioned ideas, but it also manages to pack in great characters and a breakneck speed that forces you to say "Just one more chapter" again and again. Did I understand all of the science behind the time travel? No. Did I need to? Maybe, but I think that Barker does a good enough job of bringing you along for the ride that I didn't end up questioning it.

As an adult reader that sometimes struggles with the sameness of Young Adult books, Waking Romeo felt like a breath of fresh air. I hope that everyone involved in bringing this book to life has a wonderful pub day!

Thank you to NetGalley and Flatiron Books for an ARC of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review!

this had some amazing ideas, but the execution was a bit spotty, at least for me. I was confused a lot of the time, yet I found some aspects to be very predictable. I think that, once again, this is a case of a book that's concept is stronger than the way the author chooses to tell the story.

"(We're) squatting in a world that was built in the past, and peaked there. Died there, even. And yet here we are playing house, pretending there's a pulse."

In this post-apocalyptic wasteland created by selfish humans, Romeo and Juliet's romance is a matter of life and death, not just for them, but for the whole world.

Nearly everyone time-traveled to the future hoping for a better life, but they didn't think about the fact that the future they dreamed of would be built on the ashes of the society they left to crumble. With no one left to fix things, the future kept getting bleaker and bleaker, and the travelers kept jumping further and further, hoping for a better tomorrow.

Romeo and Juliet live in a tiny community of non-travelers, and their ill-fated romance occurred before the start of the book. But this Romeo and Juliette haven't died - at least, not yet. Now Juliette's permanently disabled, and Romeo has been in a coma for two years.

Their paths cross with a small group of time-travelers called the Deadenders, people snatched from the brink of death to try to fix the timeline. They've been sent with one mission: wake up Romeo. But the threads of time keep getting more and more tangled, and their task is harder than they can possibly imagine.

The world the author has built is breathtakingly bleak and brutal, littered with crumbling buildings, malfunctioned time travel pods and the bones of unlucky time travelers. The survivors try to keep a sense of normalcy, but their world shrinks day by day and their food supplies from the past won't last forever.

This book is action-packed and tightly paced, but this is not a book to skim. It takes careful attention to keep all the timelines and time-traveling jumps straight in your head.

Juliette's a heroine to root for as she comes into her own and learns to be resilient in the face of the dangers thrust upon her. She finds a guide in Elliot, a member of the Deadenders about her age, and together, they set out to wake Romeo and set into motion all the events to come.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Set in the dystopian future, which has been abandoned by time travelers travelling endlessly forward, Juliet Capulet deals with the fallout of her whirlwind romance with the currently comatose Romeo. But then, time traveler Ellis arrives from the future with a single mission: wake Romeo.

I thought I knew what to expect when I picked up this book, but I definitely didn't. The crossover of Romeo and Juliet and Wuthering Heights, the elaborate time travel plot, all of it left me absolutely floored. It was easy to fall in love and stay in love with this book.

Although the elaborate, at-times-convoluted plot kept me glued to the page, it was ultimately the rich characters and their complex emotional lives which have kept me thinking about this book long after the last page.

If you're not a fan of time travel, this book may be a hard nut to crack, but the payoff is absolutely worth it. It's a wonderful journey from start to finish.

Kathryn Barker's WAKING ROMEO is an interesting and creative mash-up retelling of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Bronte's Wuthering Heights. Everything ends up tying together quite well with all the time travel. but I never really connected with Jules or Ellis. While this particular story was not for me, I am certain that there are many readers out there who would devour and love it. I appreciated the nods to Taylor Swift's "Love Story".