this is a touching story about the power of human relationships, and the legacy they build, even at the end of a life or a city or a world. while a little long at times, i found it striking and lovely..

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for the opportunity to read and review this title.
This is the kind of book that makes you want to call your mother. This book really speaks to the profound and devastating loss of a maternal relationship: Bo who has lost her mother and Mia who is estranged from her daughter. Set in the what feels like the not so distant future we are in a world where the weather is in great upheaval. It has been raining for years, and when it began we lost many people to the waves. This book follows Bo and her inability to let her mother and the places they spent time go. She wants to linger for as long as she can so she can stay close to this mother lost beneath the waves. In this stubbornness she meets Mia. Mia really has no choice but to stay. She and her daughter do not have a real tangible relationship anymore. She reaches out to Bo and thus a relationship is born. After time together these women begin to heal parts of themselves by knowing one another. Bo gets to see the feelings she has for her mother through to her death through the death of Mia. This is a really beautiful story. It hurts in all the right places in your heart. This is stunning. Thank you Susanna Kwan this is lovely.

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for the opportunity to read and review this title.
Awake in the Floating City takes place in a rain-drenched, dystopian version of San Francisco around the year 2050, where people can live up to 130 years. It’s a hauntingly atmospheric world—especially striking to me because I read it during a month when my own town was hit with over a foot of rain. The flooded setting felt all too real.
At its core, this book is about relationships—particularly the layered complexities between mothers and daughters. There are two storylines at play—Bo dealing with the grief of losing her mother, and Mia navigating a strained relationship with her daughter, Beverly. The connection between Bo and Mia isn’t always clear-cut, but it quietly builds into something meaningful. Through caring for Mia, Bo gets the chance to offer the kind of compassion she couldn't extend to her mother—and in the process, seems to reconnect with a version of herself she thought was gone.
That said, I struggled at times with Bo’s purpose in the story. While Mia’s arc was clearer and more emotionally resonant, Bo often felt like she was floating—much like the city around her. Her art plays a big role in the narrative, but the descriptions of her process were overly abstract for me. It wasn’t until the final reveal of her finished piece that her work—and maybe her role—finally clicked.
The novel doesn’t hinge on dramatic twists, and the ending felt expected, but fitting. Still, I was left with a sense of something missing. The tone is reflective, even meditative—but perhaps a little too much so, leaving the emotional impact more muted than I’d hoped.
Readers drawn to character-driven stories about caregiving, aging, and intergenerational grief may find a lot to appreciate here. I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to read this, and while it didn’t fully land for me, I admire what it set out to do.

A slow, quiet, and at times almost meditative look at a future where climate change has transformed a once iconic city into something strange, new, and, probably doomed. As San Francisco sinks beneath the waves, some residents choose to remain in high-rise buildings even as their neighbors abandon ship for drier shores. This new city floats above the water, and while an interesting premise itself, the book focuses on the exploration and development of the relationship between two residents, the elderly Mia and Bo, a woman who has stayed behind to look for traces of her mother but also becomes Mia's caretaker. Beautiful writing and great character work really stand out here, though readers looking for something heavy on plot or with a quicker pace might get turned away by this one.

I found this book very well-written and very profound. Set in the not-so-distant future (it seems like 2050s or 2060s), this book takes place in San Francisco, where it's been raining and flooding for seven years and the majority of people have left the city. Bo is an artist whose mother died two years ago in a big flood: ever since, Bo has felt stuck and unable to leave, even though the rest of her family has already moved away. Then she gets asked to be a caretaker for Mia, her 130-year-old neighbor, and everything changes.
 
This book reminded me a lot of All the Water in the World, which I read a few months ago and loved. But that was more of an adventure story, while this book is more about how you build a life when the world is falling apart. Bo is completely adrift, lost without her family and her art but also anchored in a way she can't escape. Mia is alone, as well, and she is dying, slowly but surely. Their relationship moves from unease to tenderness to contempt to unease to something like friendship and all the way back, and it's a really moving portrayal of caretaking and finding a purpose when everything is just so messed up. The difficulties of caretaking for both sides weren't sugarcoated, and I loved the complexities of Bo and Mia's different family dynamics and relationship with the past and present.

This book also really explores Bo and Mia's Chinese-American identities and details Mia's life growing up in rural China and living under Japanese occupation, and then moving to San Francisco with a husband she barely knew and trying to make it work. I really enjoyed that aspect of the book - it was interesting to see what Bo learned that she never knew, and it provided lots of space for Bo and Mia to understand each other. I also just feel like I learned a lot, especially as the book was ending.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for an advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review!

This is a tough book to rate because expectations will deeply impact perception.

Awake in the Floating City is not a sci fi / dystopian novel, though its setting is dystopian. I was really drawn to the premise as a life long san franciscan given it is set in a future’s flooded San Francisco deeply impacted by climate change. But very quickly the story shifts from a future under climate catastrophe to an intergenerational friendship exploring memory, time and adaptability as the world becomes more an more uninhabitable.

Which is all to say: as a work of speculative fiction, it felt somewhat unsatisfying. But as literary fiction, it's a beautifully written story of friendship and survival. Adjust expectations accordingly.

Thank you to Net Galley and Pantheon for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. We are taken to a San Francisco of the future where flooding has made the city nearly unlivable. Yet, few remain - mainly those who could make the trip, the elderly and disabled. Bo knows she should have left but can't seem to go as her mother disappeared during a deluge and has always had hope she would find her. Her cousin has arranged for Boto leave the city and, just before she's scheduled to leave, she receives a note from an elderly neighbor, Mia, asking if she would become her caregiver. She now has her reason to stay a while longer. Even though Mia can be grumpy and difficult, a beautiful relationship develops, one that as a surrogate mother and the other as a surrogate daughter as Mia's daughter lives in Europe and wasn't able to come to get her mother (or didn't want to?). The beginning of the book sets up this post-apocalyptic world they live in and the rest is their relationship. At times, the story lagged but the ending is quite beautiful with a lovely and surprisingly last couple chapters. 3.5 stars.

I don't have a personal connection to San Francisco, but after reading this novel, I felt every inch of the emotion of place the author wanted to invoke.

I love slow, dystopian works that focus on the people rather than the circumstances. I find it fascinating to see how others view the possibilities of life after collapse. This is definitely a slow moving story but it is an interesting reflection on the history of San Francisco and how memory and place tie unlikely people together when needed.

I learned a lot about the history of San Francisco, as well as ideas of art and the possibilities that technology has in bringing together in times of crisis.

I did feel that it had a period in the middle of the story that dragged on a bit too much for my preference, but the beauty of the story and of the writing style pulled me back in easily.

Awake in the Floating City is a quiet novel, of a quiet apocalypse, if you will. As in, it isn't a cataclysmic event, rather a slow flooding that is taking down one city at a time, whittling away coasts one by one. San Francisco happens to be among them, and it happens to be where main character Bo lives. Chooses to live, in fact, because she is lucky enough to have extended family who offer her safer accommodations and a way to get to them. But because Bo's mother is missing, presumed drowned in the floods, Bo just cannot seem to take her relatives up on their generous offer.

So she takes on a new job, as she's known around town as a good caregiver to the super-elderly (that is a thing in this time): caring for 130-year old Mia as she is increasingly losing the ability to live on her own. And this, truly, is where the meat of the story lies: in lives lived, and how we leave our mark on the world around us. As Bo attempts to create an artistic rendering of Mia's life as a final birthday gift, she's left to think about the passage of time, the transience of it all. It's very beautiful, thought provoking, and somehow both celebratory and melancholy.

The art part was kind of lost on me- I am not a good visualizer, nor am I very versed in art- but I bet it would be phenomenally powerful onscreen. Or, for those better able to visualize, though the finished product definitely made me tear up! The overall story is light on plot but heavy with character development and relationships.

A melancholic and moving meditation on legacy and memory, shaped by an artist living in a flooded future, that’s just a little too oblique for me.

It has been raining nonstop for 7 years in San Francisco and most residents have left the city for drier pastures. Bo has had several opportunities to leave, but always ends up drifting into staying. She lives alone eking out a skeletal existence on a high floor of a mostly deserted block, taking jobs as a caregiver for elderly people who either have no family or who have been left by them.

When she is contacted by Mia, a 130-year old neighbor, who wants company as much as she needs assistance, Bo finds a purpose: she wants to create a memorial for Mia and for all those like her who emigrated to San Francisco from China in the early 20th century. Mixing Mia’s stories with research from a rundown library and Bo’s own paintings, she sets out to create an elegy for a nearly-forgotten population and way of life.

The world building is gorgeous with a deeply felt sense of place, doubtless helped by San Francisco being the author’s, and my, home. The richly imagined destroyed and decaying city is counterpointed with the remaining residents’ tenacious quotidian existence.

But, as I should have known when I saw that this was described as “lyrical” - my Kryptonite in books - I found this slow to the point of eye-rolling and occasionally too needlessly cryptic. So while I could appreciate much of this, I felt a little more plot would have given me a better toehold.

Thanks to Pantheon and Netgalley for the digital review copy.

What a beautiful, haunting book about the end of life (for an individual and the world), an unexpected friendship, and lessons on preserving life in the face of extreme loss. What determines whose life is ordinary or whose life should be memorialized? What. Is the role of art in facilitating these questions?

While a slow draw, this book was beautiful and really brought up some important questions for me to think about. I loved the friendship between the two female MCs. With so few characters, the book achieves a lot and I’ll be thinking of this one for a long time.

I loved this quiet, literary post-apocalyptic novel. It's not heavy on plot, but it doesn't need to be. It's a beautiful exploration of how one woman (a visual artist) is trying to keep living her life in a flooded and nearly unrecognizable San Francisco, while working as a caregiver to an elderly woman. If you're a fan of realistic dystopian novels that are more character-focused than plot-based, absolutely pick this one up.

I wanted to love this book but unfortunately I don’t think I was the target audience for it. I appreciated thr free electronic arc provided by the publisher

The book is beautifully written, but I just wasn't in the mood for it? It moved a little to slow for me and did not get through the first half of the book. I will put it on my TBR list to get back to it some day. Giving it 4 stars just for the writing. Will have to update review when I get to it. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

The premise of this novel was great: Water levels and rain have increased to the point that San Francisco is now largely underwater. Everyone lives in high rise apartment buildings, taking bridges between the buildings and growing fruits and vegetable on the roofs. The characters are good. A young woman, Bo, is an artist who takes a job caring for a super-senior, Mia, who is well over 100 years old.

With all this going on, the book did not seem to have much momentum. Weak on plot.

DNF at 16%

This is normally a book that I would probably love. The relationship between Bo and Mia seems sweet, and I’m sure they will both learn and get a lot of fulfillment from each other.

Unfortunately, with today’s political climate I just can’t bring myself to read dystopian fiction. I had requested this before Trump got elected and have been putting it off since. I tried because of the release date, but it’s just too much for me at this point in time. Hopefully I’ll be able to come back to it and update this review!

I will always have a soft spot for books that feature the Bay Area as their main setting - even if this particular tale is a climate disaster story. However, it's extremely character driven and a bit slow in pace. It succeeded in making me reflect, and I appreciate when books can do that. This is a very layered and thoughtful book about loss, remembrance, caretaking, and creation.

I liked this book enough to almost make it halfway through, but it's not holding my attention enough right now to finish it. I was expecting more from the climate disaster narrative than listening to the life story of a woman over 100 who's bitter about everything.

I've rated this book 4/5 stars because the writing is great, but the storyline isn't for me. Someone who's more into literary fiction will enjoy this!

Awake in the Floating City by Susanna Kwan is such a remarkable debut.
I devoured this book in one sitting, completely captivated.
The writing is stunning, elegant, and emotionally sharp.

A memory cannot be drowned

In the wake of a seven year span of torrential and nearly non-stop rains, San Francisco like many other low lying areas has been almost completely submerged. Where there once were streets there are now rivers, and all but the tallest buildings are under water. Most of the residents of the Bay Area have been swept away by the water, fled for what they hoped were safer places or moved to higher ground. One such resident of the city is Bo, whose apartment is located on an upper floor of a tall building. She is an artist, but since the day that her mother disappeared during a storm surge (for which she feels at least partly responsible) she has not been able to summon her artistic muse. She lives alone, lonely, her only social contact when she ventures to her building's roof which has become a market for food and other necessities as well as a needed social outlet for those who feel cut off from the rest of the world. Bo has extended family members who were part of the large migration out of the city; many ended up in Canada and are in regular communication with her. They want her to leave her precarious life in San Francisco and join them where it is, they say, safe. Bo doesn't share the same urgent desire to leave (in fact, she hopes if she waits long enough her mother will reappear), and is only too aware of the dangers that lie on the trail from where she is to where they are. One of her cousins issues an ultimatum; he is coming for her on a boat on a certain date and she must be packed and ready to go. Even as Bo gathers her essential belongings a note is slipped under her door. Mia, a 130 year old resident of the building, is asking for her help a few days a week in return for pay; Bo had acted in a similar role for one of Mia's neighbors, and it was noted. She can't decide what she really wants to do, but ends up staying where she feels someone needs her. Their relationship starts out stilted but over time develops into a deep friendship, despite the vast difference in their ages and life experiences. Mia tells Bo the story of her life, shedding a light on aspects of San Francisco history and its treatment of Asian Americans as the tales unfold. It is Mia and her life that will provide inspiration to Bo's art at last.
Despite its setting in the near future after global warming has wrought havoc with temperatures and sea levels, this is not a taut sci-fi thriller; it is instead a story about people, relationships, loss, hope and the power to go on in the face of disaster. Character trumps action in author Susanna Kwan's debut novel, and in particular the characters of Bo and Mia are beautifully rendered and possess great emotional depth. It is also a paean to San Francisco, drawn in its changed yet still beautiful state. Weaving together themes of memory, grief, relationships, loss and change, the author paints a surprisingly hopeful portrait of people who even amidst devastation can show one another compassion and encourage one another to hold on to hope for better days. Mia's personal stories are connected to real historical events, which brings a sense of realism to the stories as they unfold. This isn't a perfect novel, but it is one in which prose is nearly poetic and encourages reflection on the strength of the human spirit. In a world which has recently gone through a pandemic, the emotional toll on forced isolation will resonate with many. Readers of Jemimah Wei, Téa Obreht and Rachel Khong should definitely take a peek within this novel's covers, as should those who enjoy immersing themselves in a leisurely-paced, well-crafted story. My thanks to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage and Anchor/Pantheon Books for allowing me access to this poignant tale in exchange for my honest review.