Once Upon Tomorrow

By Karen Comer

Lothian Children’s Books 2026

Reviewed by Dimity Powell

Verse novels possess a certain magic that levels up emotion and crystalises conception. Award-winning Aussie author, Karen Comer’s Once Upon Tomorrow is just such a lyrical foray into the past, the questionable future and the fairy tale reality of all the in-betweens.

It’s fascinating watching the tales of three girls each from a different time period of social awareness unfold in this unlikely format. It works brilliantly however, as Comer weaves the stories of eighteen-year-old Jungian student, Miri’s from 2025 with Aleita’s, a sixteen-year-old tech forward youth with confrontational feelings about the digital era of the 2125. Stitched throughout their respective stories is Sylvie’s, a young maiden whose mysterious fairy tale existence unfurls into a tale unto its own, The Girl At The Threshold.

Miri finds herself pregnant, in love and obsessed with the direction her, until now, carefully planned future should take all before her final high school year. She craves clarity, misses her mother and values the serenity found in her mother’s yarn shop, The Three Fates. As a student of psychology, she is deeply immersed in Jung’s liminal concept and now finds herself in that state emotionally and physically, constantly angsting over the length of (life’s) thread that Lachesis has measured for her. Is life pre-determined by The Fates or can the fragile texture of one’s own tapestry be altered?

The girl at the other side of the metaphorical time threshold is Aleita. She and her contemporaries live in a world where constant AI influence and monitoring strip bare personal space and solitude. To escape the constant barrage of mind interruptions and virtual prompts, she escapes to the sanctity of the book spaces her ancestors fought to establish. Within these libraries, the embedded tech is not yet permitted to reach them. Use of this premise pays a powerful homage to the concept of libraries, as they were in ancient times, now in the 21st Century and what, hope against all hope, they will be in the future.

Comer’s subtle commentary on patriarchy, the ill treatment of females, environmental degradation and the disconcerting rapid rise of AI platforms is recognisable in each of the girls’ tales. It’s all enough to cause a young person to worry and question the true value of life and their position within it, however, the opposite is true thanks to the eloquent first-person delivery, gentle balance of viewpoints and rousing retelling of Rapunzel.

Symbolic references suffuse each narrative until the experience, rather like one of Miri’s hand-knitted creations, eventually nears completion and the full beautiful outcome is revealed.

Once Upon Tomorrow is a glowing ode to fairy tales past and the extraordinary, almost subvert way they championed the erstwhile, so called, ‘weaker sex’. It reminds us how inextricably interwoven our lives, past histories and futures are and that only the puzzlement of life ‘comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness’ of it – quote attributed to Carl Jung.

Respect nature. Be cautious of over prescribed artificiality. Never underestimate the strength of a single determined soul and embrace authentic love. Always.

I recommend you immerse yourself in this warm and astounding novel before tomorrow comes.

Karen Comer is the author of Sunshine on Vinegar Street, also reviewed in StoryLinks

Dimity Powell is an Australian author and reviewer whose books include Oswald Messweather, and At the End of Holyrood Lane. Her latest book is The Boy Who  Lost His Laugh.