Beauty Sleep – Kathryn Evans

Laura and her younger brother are both suffering from an extremely rare cancer that has no cure. So, her mums decided to put them both into a cryogenic sleep until a cure can be found. Forty years later, Laura is revived to discover, she is cured but both her mums and brother are dead. The only person from her past that is still alive is her best friend Stacey. The only issue is there is an injunction that prevents Stacey from getting anywhere near Laura. Laura goes on a mission to find out what happened in the forty years she was in cryogenic sleep and who she can truly believe.

This book captivated me right from the first chapter. It is Black Mirror meets Sleeping Beauty and it was spectacular. It is full of topics that are incredibly important and should always be tackled in YA books. Also, this book has ethical debates throughout which was new to me in YA but is another thing I think is important to be discussed. If we can make a scientific advancement, does it matter what the cost to life is?

This book is told from dual perspectives. The first is Laura’s who has just woken up 40 years in the future and is trying to get her head around the technological advances as well as what happened to her family in the 40 years, she was frozen. The other perspective is Shem’s, a boy who is similar in age to Laura. Shem has been trying to live under the radar on the streets of the south coast of the UK where it is illegal to be homeless and living without an electronic footprint.

I was drawn into both characters stories as soon as they were introduced. Kathryn Evans has done an excellent job to set up these two characters and their stories. Both characters interested me right from the offset, not just that but so did all the secondary characters. Although they are secondary characters, they play such a huge part in the overall story.

Another thing I loved about this book was the author’s vision of the very near futures technological advances. For example, the 3D tablet interactions, tracker injections and even touch time. This made the book feel as though it could all come true because a lot of these advances are happening as I write this review. Also, this made the book feel very much like an episode of Black Mirror.

This book is an excellently written science fiction mystery novel that will leave you guessing right till the very end. I enjoy that the ethical debates throughout the book were written extremely accessible for younger readers.

The books is dark, futuristic, science fiction, mystery and contemporary all rolled into one. You won’t be able to put this book down once you start it. I cannot recommend it enough and I cannot wait to read more of Kathryn Evan’s books in the future.