Changes

I started with Romeo, talking with my friend about unrequited love, but that didn't mean I stayed Romeo for long. Within scenes I was off with Juliet, ''as'' Juliet, buffing up my muscles and having asides to the end of the book regarding rooster's testicles. On the whole , I'd been following Shakespeare's variant of the path here, as they're signed by a red heart before you choose them. Whether this is the right way to go is, of course, entirely up to you – it certainly looked that the more pronounced your diversion from the norm, the shorter your story might be. I, for one, was soon in a bar , clinking beers with a hunk, living with him a couple of years, and becoming a pirate, the end.

So I backtracked a little, and soon swapped from Juliet to Romeo, which was myself seeing myself and liking what I saw on a party dancefloor. Eventually , I was at ''that'' balcony scene, although I was Juliet again, pondering the ''Montague peener'' (whatever that is – although I think I can guess) and living it all in modern argot. I then had the quandary to declare love back, or to say it was all a bit sudden. As the book has taken great strides to hammer home before now, I (Juliet) am sixteen, and even if my mother thinks I'm late to the altar, I (Juliet) have hardly had a decision to make so far.

You get the gist. Everything here is wrapped up in teen-talk, which can dip into the Shakespearean quite appropriately and quite well at times, but does eventually grate. It made me feel the book was only really suited to American teens whose speech is attempted here; certainly , other people will have too much cause to dislike the style and turn the book aside. Follow those red hearts of Shakespeare and you'll get pretty much a straight-up telling in the style of all those modern-dress, based-on Shakespeare teen comedy films we suffered a few years back.

And there you have it. You can , of course , take the purchase option, and try this out for yourself. There is a heck of a lot of book here. It can riff on the whole Shakespeare canon quite well; it can frustrate, however, with its tone of voice, and both with its sticking to and diversifying in so bonkers a fashion from, the original. What is certain is that getting a heck of a lot out of this book needs a heck of a lot of work.

As you'd expect, adult-friendly books in the 'wrong' order aren't terribly common – we can think of [[Invisible Monsters Remix by Chuck Palahniuk]] and that's about it. You could shelve this alongside [[When You Were Mine by Rebecca Serle]]. For more from the lovers, try [[The Romeo and Juliet Killers by Xavier Leret]].