Here's what you can expect from The Unmapping:

- A narration style that I describe as "chatty." It wonderfully captures speech and thought patterns in a way that makes it feel like the narrator is truly sitting down to tell you a story.

- A literary leaning contemporary sci-fi.

- Our main character, Esme, who finds that amid large-scale chaos, she also has things to face about herself and her relationship with her fiance, who is missing. Where is he, and why?

- Our other main character, Arjun, who wants to be a hero, to matter to the people around him, and that, at times, is achingly relatable and, at times, acutely disconcerting.

- A cult? In this economy?

- An honest look at who gets impacted most by disaster and how society views them

- A book that is both very human and a little alien that will create a memorable reading experience.

If this is the author’s debut, sign me up for everything she ever writes. What an amazing and unique book! Imagine waking up to find that your house is no longer on your street. That’s what’ is happening in The Unmapping. Streets and landmarks are simply ….moving. People need GPS coordinates to find their job, ambulances cannot get to sick people because their location keeps changing. And these changes are not simply inconvenient; they cause disasters and chaos. Well-written with excellent character development and a plot filled with relentless action, this is an incredible story that I can’t recommend enough!

Thanks so much for the opportunity to read!

Thank you to NetGalley and to Bindery Books for the ARC of The Unmapping by Denise S Robbins.

This novel is like a reverse version of what we all experienced during pandemic lock downs - instead of being stuck in one place, the buildings of NYC physically move every morning at 4am, causing layers of chaos in infrastructure and general human functioning, while leaving people lost in place. This is the unmapping, a phenomenon that began in a tiny town in Wisconsin that makes Christmas trees and is now spreading across the globe.

Our journey follows Esme and Arjun, 20-something emergency management team workers both trying to navigate the new world. Esme is anxious to find her fiance and to solve problems through statistics behind the screen, while Arjun is desperate to be noticed and be a hero on the streets. Together they end up connected to the highs and lows of the unmapping and humanity itself.

The first 30% very much seems simply about Esme and Arjun and their individual journeys in the first week of the unmapping. I think after that point aspects of the novel may have gone over my head (or maybe I was thinking too hard about where to place them). I so much wanted the answers to lie within the "red cloak" cults and the trutrees and the apartment collapse, but in the end I'm not sure I entirely understood the message of the novel overall outside of my more basic understanding of Esme and Arjun as people. I've been thinking about the novel for two days since finishing it, but I feel like I'm missing something even though I really enjoyed it.

I think this was very creatively done and very well written. Robbins captures that sense of loss wen surrounded by others that was so strongly felt during the lockdowns, yet it's turned entirely on its head. There is a focus on the environment, the types of energy and power we need to avoid catastrophes, and the damage of excess/corporations/corruption that lead to problems great and small in communities and global scales. I enjoyed that Arjun and Esme were 23 and 26 - they are young but are holding massive responsibility - much like our younger generations currently feel about the state of the world, the climate and their place in it. While their actions still showed some of their room to grow up as people, they were both so willing to take on the responsibility in an emergency management system that relegated them to the background in a time when those in power had no real direction themselves.

The story wastes no time plunging into its central crisis: the mysterious “Unmapping,” an unexplained phenomenon that sees New York’s geography continuously rearranging itself. Skyscrapers appear on beaches, entire neighborhoods vanish, and the city’s infrastructure collapses under the weight of disarray. Yet, there’s no apocalyptic destruction—just an eerie reshuffling that leaves the residents bewildered, stranded, and searching for answers.

Esme Green and Arjun Varma, members of New York’s Emergency Management team, anchor the novel’s emotional and narrative core. Esme’s struggle to navigate bureaucratic chaos while privately mourning the disappearance of her fiancé adds a personal urgency to the city’s crisis. In contrast, Arjun embodies boots-on-the-ground heroism, his efforts to save stranded and disoriented residents driven by altruism, and his need for meaning. Together, they provide a human lens through which the novel's more significant questions—identity, loss, and survival—are explored.

What sets The Unmapping apart is its ability to weave thrilling disaster fiction with deeper reflections on societal resilience and fragility—the novel grapples with climate change, political unrest, and collective uncertainty in incredibly timely ways. The emergence of mysterious “red cloak” cults, who find meaning in the chaos, adds another layer of intrigue, underscoring humanity’s tendency to search for order—even in disarray.

Readers will feel the weight of empty streets, the tension of fractured communities, and the awe of a skyline in perpetual flux. Yet, beneath the shifting geography lies a story of human connection—of individuals forced to confront who they are when their literal and figurative foundations are stripped away.

The publisher provided ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.