A version of this review was published on Lost in a Good Book

This is Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet told through dinosaurs which is a brilliant concept and should start a whole series of Shakespeare told through dinosaurs.

Romeosaurus and his friends do all the normal things we’ve come to see from a Romeo and Juliet story: there is a masked ball, Romeosaurus sneaks in with his friends and causes chaos but not before he and Juliet spot each other and become friends. All the main plot points from the original are covered, all our favourite characters (with a slight variation on the details and circumstances as you’d expect). I love that this book doesn’t make Juliet the plant-loving herbivore - instead she is the large, carnivorous T-Rex in a smashing dress.

The illustrations are fantastic, it’s dinosaurs but they’re in period clothing, but also in the wild 150 million years ago. The myriad of anachronistic elements can be ignored but also cherished because this is such a cute story and the little jokes about logistics and dinosaur anatomy bring in a different type of humour with issues such a stegosauruses inability to climb due to their lack of claws, and jokes about tiny T-Rex arms.

O'Hara keeps the two as friends, and through the story we also learn friends are important and can come in any form, even the carnivorous kind. It has a wonderful mix of happily ever after that picture books can bring, but there’s also a touch of the original Shakespeare tragedy which is absolutely fantastic.