Timeslip Tuesday-- Cryonics

Healey, Karen. When We Wake
5 March 2013, Little, Brown Books For Young Reads
ARC from Baker and Taylor

Teegan loves her life in 2027-- her mom is great (although she misses her dad, who was killed as a soldier), she has an amazing new boyfriend, and she and her friends are politically active and attend a lot of rallies. Unfortunately, at one rally, she is shot by a sniper and killed. Because she has signed paperwork donating her body to science, she has been frozen using Cryonics and wakes up 100 years later. Other "freezies" have not been saved, so the government is very interested in what will happen to her. Because Teegan has been "resurrected", some political groups are not happy- the Inheritors of the Earth think that she has disobeyed God's law and should kill herself, and Australians for Australia consider her an illegal alien and want her deported. The world of 2127 is different in many ways-- it's okay to be gay, and no one blinks if there are gay couples, Muslims aren't discriminated against, and computers are sheets of plastic that can fold up and be put in a pocket. People don't eat red meat, though, and Australia has a strict anti-immigration policy. One of Teegan's great loves is music, especially the Beatles, and when she is finally allowed to go to school, she makes friends with several other students, including the "talented alien" Abdi from Djibouti. Teegan is kept strictly supervised by the government and is not supposed to say anything about her political beliefs, but teens are teens at any point in time, and she manages to find a government conspiracy, shoot her mouth off about it, and get into trouble.
Strengths: I really enjoyed the beginning of this book because it wasn't really dystopian, just what one would expect after a hundred plus years of global warming and depleting resources. Teegan's interest in music excuses her love of a VERY old band, but since there are lots of young Beatles fans even now, it makes it fun (Picky Reader is hovering and waiting for my ARC of this right now!). Good world building, fun characters, and realistic reaction to waking up and finding out an entire world is gone.
Weaknesses: Once the whole government conspiracy crops up, this kind of lost me. Combined with Teegan proclaiming "F**ity f*** f***" , I will pass on purchasing, even though it was an interesting book and would be good for a high school dystopia unit.