Format Review 🎧 It took me a few chapters to get used to the narrator’s style. At first, I found it very robotic, like assistive text, but when I turned up the speed to 1.25x, I had a much better time. I appreciated the different voices the narrator had for the different characters!

Story Review 📖
This was terrifying, a propulsive read. It grabbed me right from the beginning and held my attention throughout: between the Gulf Stream collapse, apocalyptic flooding, crumbling infrastructure, cottonmouths… it was pretty non-stop action from both Juliet and Billy’s perspectives.

Pacing between Juliet and Billy chapters is well crafted using the common thread of their messages to enhance their perspectives and context for me as a reader. At the beginning, Juliet’s sections were most riveting for me. But, about midway through, I was enjoying Billy’s more. Billy had a more interesting development arc for me. As Juliet travels north, she kinda unravels a bit and her actions don’t make a lot of sense. I kinda felt bad for Billy being pressured by Juliet to leave the house for Martin’s daughters. His frustration with Juliet obsessing about those daughters was palpable. Like Billy, I was distractingly interested in where the dad and the brother were! The Juliet/Martin dynamic was uncomfortable as heck.

Risse’s descriptions and language gave me a vivid picture of the landscape throughout the book. She has such a rich and illustrative writing style that, combined with the audio book format, truly brought this book to life for me.

There’s a lot of “phone bad” rhetoric in this story, with Juliet even linking phone use to climate breakdown that felt a bit silly. That notwithstanding, the climate breakdown theme was really well done and, to some extent, many of the unknowns around the flood strengthened the atmosphere of the story.

I liked the ending but was kind of annoyed with all the unanswered questions. I could have spent a lot more time with this story!

🐶 Is the dog okay? When Billy first finds Salty, there are upsetting descriptions of drowned dogs. Salty doesn’t come to any harm for the remainder of the story. Pepper’s status after Juliet leaves Dog Island is unknown.

I am not going to finish Kate Risse's "Inland". I have absolutely no idea how it currently has 4.7 stars on Goodreads, from the first 15 readers.

I'm having the worst time engaging. It's supposed to be about families surviving climate change, but the characters are making ridiculous and deadly decisions. I can't find sympathy for them. I don't even like them.

Also, WHAT IS UP WITH THE NATIONWIDE BAN ON SMARTPHONES? If the author is going to make up something damaging or toxic about what the phones are made of or how they work, please tell us so we're in on the details of the world you're creating. Otherwise it comes off like conspiracy nonsense. The first 20% of the book is all about how the phones are contraband, but everyone can't put them down, but they're making people sick (?), so they should be resisting. It's all just too much, and too little at the same time.

As well, Rachel Fulginiti, the narrator, has a harsh and gravelly voice that is a real turnoff for me.

Overall this was a one-star.