This book presented a truly unique and thought-provoking speculative premise: a New York City where buildings mysteriously shifted locations overnight, plunging the metropolis into instant chaos. It was a bold concept that immediately hooked me, starting a deep dive into human resilience and the breakdown of order in the face of an inexplicable disaster.

On the positive side, the core idea of The Unmapping was incredibly imaginative and provided ground for exploring how society and individuals coped with an ever-changing reality. Robbins excelled at portraying the immediate aftermath and the bureaucratic nightmare that Esme and Arjun, working for Emergency Management, had to navigate. The book touched on timely themes like climate change and political unrest, grounding the fantastical premise in a relatable sense of modern anxiety. The focus on the characters' personal struggles, particularly Esme's search for her fiancé, added an emotional anchor to the widespread confusion.

However, the very nature of the premise, while intriguing, also proved to be a double-edged sword. The constant shifting and inherent confusion sometimes made the narrative itself feel a bit disorienting or slow to gain momentum. While the book was character-driven, I wanted more concrete answers or a clearer understanding of the phenomenon's origins, which was not the primary focus.

Ultimately, The Unmapping was an ambitious and original debut that offered a compelling look at a city in flux and the human spirit's attempts to adapt.

(Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for the eARC in exchange for a review. I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own)

Okay… imagine waking up in New York at 4 in the morning to find that every building has switched places overnight. The power is out and thousands are missing. Also, the Empire State Building is now on Coney Island. And then, it changes again. And again. And again.🤯

This wickedly creative sci-fi novel hits on hot button themes like climate change and political unrest, while showing a world in midst of complete crisis. Its disjointed storyline perfectly reflects the uncanny chaos and I loved every page!

I believe fans of Emily St. John Mandel and Samantha Harvey will devour this one. It’s a smart, high-concept read that is both bizarre and chilling.

Thanks so much to NetGalley and Bindery for the digital ARC. I can’t wait to see how others respond to this intriguing story

**Thank you for the ARC**

I still think about this book once a day at least, planning for when the world I know will lose shape.

I loved this.

The characters were flushed out enough that they felt like people I know but all of them still had surprises and mysteries
to them.

Though the premise itself felt outlandish the world and characters were so well crafted it felt plausible. I would say this is character driven but I always felt like something was happening to push the story forward.

My only complaint is the ending it felt too neat for me and the book, but I still preordered right after reading the ARC because I needed it on my shelf.

New York City is preparing for a hurricane but what ends up happening at 4 am is beyond what anyone could have expected. Suddenly buildings and blocks of the city are not where they were before. Esme Green and Arjun Varma work for the city's disaster management department. Both have roles in determining what is causing the Unmapping, if there is a way to prevent it, and how to deal with the disastrous consequences.

I had a great time with this book. The premise is so unique and interesting. It has a nice balance of science fiction elements with emotional moments. Throwing in a few cults also felt weirdly realistic to the time we are living in. Esme felt very relatable to me and I loved Arjun even if he had some questionable decision making moments. I felt they both grew a lot as the book developed. The writing style really worked for me. I will be keeping an eye out for anything Denise does in the future. I have already pre-ordered the audiobook and can't wait to do a reread.

Thank you to NetGalley, Bindery, and Mareas for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a gifted copy of this novel!

For starters, I will say that I don’t believe that I am the ideal reader for this novel. Although the premise did interest me, I personally tend to struggle with the pacing of character-development stories, of which this book is. I believe that the idea of this plot is absolutely unique, and I really enjoyed the nuggets of information the author included about this scenario that I would not have thought of otherwise; like, where do you get gas in a situation like this? Despite struggling at times with the pacing, I did notice the characters to be well-developed as they are the center of this story. If you are someone who enjoys novels that are character-centric, with a bit of a sci-fi feel in the background, I have a feeling that you would absolutely love this one.

I found “The Unmapping” very timely! Especially considering major weather events, climate change, and political instability that just seem to continue to worsen. I really enjoyed the conversational tone of the narrator which helped build credibility with me as an audience member, I also enjoyed the small cast of characters that we got to know so intimately, I found the writing style reminiscent of Fredrik Backman, but I also recently read “Anxious People”.

Thank you Bindery Books for the opportunity to read this ARC!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC.

Reading “The Unmapping” just a few years after the recent pandemic gave me some feelings of flashback and deja vu. The uncertainty of a city, and the general feeling of panic and confusion at the government’s orders (should we stay home? should we go out?) was quite similar to what most of us went through during the pandemic, that we can only look back and wonder, how did we survive it all?

Survival is supposedly the main motivation of the characters in the story, but the author does a great job highlighting various unnamed side characters who are all going through their own problems, and now having found this even bigger Unmapping concern, it doesn’t take long before everything comes to a head in chaos and disaster.

If you are looking for a speculative/dystopian fiction that is multi-layered but still easy to relate to, this book is for you.

The Unmapping by Denise S. Robbins is one of those rare books that is so unique you are unlikely to forget it.

This speculative fiction centres around an event where at 4am every night, New York city’s buildings move or become Unmapped causing chaos to reign.

We follow Esme and Arjun who work for the Emergency Management Department, albeit in different sectors. They are both swiftly thrown into the midst of the turmoil, as the varying government bodies scramble for solutions to ever escalating problems.

We have fires, electricity systems malfunctioning, a boy trapped under a building, water pipes bursting, protesters, cults and rogue shelters popping up all over the place.

Meanwhile, Esme cannot find her fiancé Marcus, and Arjun is dealing with severe anxiety.

Finally, we are also following a whole host of side characters whose lives interweave as they navigate their way through a Newer New York.

Like I said at the start, you will not forget this book easily. There is so much going on and every character adds something important and charming to the story.

The novel casts an astute eye on how humans respond in crisis. And how the choices we make affect us and those around us be it in the past, present, or future.

This book really had it all – heartbreak, charm, romance, comedy and just a “pinch” of complete and utter devastation.

Would highly recommend adding this to your Summer TBR.

Thanks to Mareas, Bindery Books and NetGalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

I went into The Unmapping because I thought the premise was so intriguing. Without any warning in the city of New York, entire blocks of the city moves at 4 AM. Most people are sleeping and have no idea this has happened. If you're not at home when it happens, you can't find your way to get back home.

The Empire State Building ends up in Coney Island as an example. All of the streets stay the same, but the buildings all shift around the entire city. This was such an excellent concept.

Esme and Arjun are the two main characters and both work in the emergency services in New York so we follow these two as the city desperately tries to help those who are misplaced. As soon as they start to get a handle on things, the unmapping occurs the next day at 4 AM again, and the next and the next... It was interesting to see how this almost became the new normal.

Unfortunately, the writing style almost caused me to DNF as it felt like a stream of consciousness being dumped on the page and it was very off-putting. I did end up sticking with it and eventually got used to it, but I'm not a fan of this style of writing. Overall, I am glad I read this because I did enjoy the unique premise.

*Thanks to partner Bindery Books - Mareas, and to NetGalley for the gifted eARC!*

This was such a mysterious and intense read as the changes to the world happen in silence each night. Definitely a eerie and thought-provoking read.

The Unmapping is amazing! It’s like nothing I’ve ever read before! This book captures the feelings of listlessness that came out of the confusion and lockdowns of the early days of the COVID pandemic with the helplessness of our current climate crisis and wraps them up in a magic realism story of hope and personal growth. I loved the absurdity that never really felt that absurd after having lived through a time when the logistics of locking down an entire city like New York is a real possibility.

Robbins gives us the story of a handful of characters as they navigate “The Unmapping,” a phenomenon that randomly(?) reorganizes all of the buildings in New York every morning at 4am. As the characters, and the city itself, relearn how to live and move in this new normal, their lives and individual journeys also adjust to meet new needs. It’s at once a fantastic conversation about climate change and humanity’s ability to make change, while also offering wonderful character development.

Honestly, there’s so much happening in this novel that I can’t imagine commenting on it all. I hope this book gets picked up and studied in many university courses on the Anthropocene, the human condition in the early 21st century, or even just magic realism! I know I’ll be going back to reread so I can dissect everything I missed the first time around!

This review is my honest opinion of the book. Thank you to NetGalley, Bindery Books, and Mareas Books for providing a digital copy for me to read in advance of the publication date.

I think I have to go 2.5 on this one.

There are many things I enjoyed about this novel, but unfortunately it didn’t fully come together for me. I loved the wacky concept of cities that become “unmapped” - essentially all the buildings get shuffled at 4AM daily. Setting this in a city such as NYC was a win as well and I liked the focus on characters that work for the agency tasked for handling the city’s emergencies.

However, I really struggled to connect with these characters on any meaningful level. We jumped between POV’s so often and what we do get feels very singular to specific aspects of their lives. With Esme we are focused on her job and fiancée Marcus, with Arjun we are focused on his anxiety and social difficulties, with Darla her being lost and the date she was supposed to be on, with the mayor we got so little time except to hear about her affair with another city’s mayor. I would have rather had less POV’s and more with the actual management of the disasters.

This felt reminiscent in style to The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel, but unfortunately didn’t live up to the bar that novel set. There are so many different small aspects included in this book that I just wish we got some more time to explore. But on that same note, this was a little wordy and long.


I received an eARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

**eARC provided through netgalley, opinions are my own**

This was a fantastic read. I flew through this in one day which is really unusual for me but I Just couldn't put it down.

The characters are flawed and multidimensional and I was really invested in them. After every chapter I would hope that the next one would cover different POVs because I was so intrigued to learn more about all of them.

The writing is beautiful and really makes you stop and think at certain points.

I loved that this was a book taking place in new york and not neccessarily a book *about* new york.

The only thing I would have liked were a few more answers to certain questions but I understand why the ending is kept vague, just for my personal taste I like to know what's going on.

Can fully recommend this to basically everyone who is interested in speculative fiction! 4,5 stars

The premise of The Unmapping was truly captivating and I was really looking forward to finding out how a city like New York, with its density and infrastructure could continuously rearrange itself every day. It's one of the things I love about the sci-fi genre, the imagination it takes to make the implausible become plausible.

Unfortunately, and it pains me to state it, that didn't happen. There was just too much going on, the story kept bringing in additional elements and I didn't feel like anything connected them. I almost feel like the author had a bunch of great ideas and decided to put them all in this one book, then the editor said what the heck, go for it.

To be fair, it started off pretty good, with the chaos of the city being unmapped, the lack of preparedness by disaster management organizations, the impact on interpersonal relationships, etc. Then came the aluminum trees and red jumpsuit cults and the lucid dreaming and it was just downhill from there. Not to mention, the few secondary story ARCs that were most exciting ended up not being explained or resolved.

I couldn't get into this. I thought it would be about people coming together and real conversations about the world changing and how to deal with it as a community. It was a mashup of the most random infodumps about characters. I didn't like any of the characters, especially the main characters, The relationships weren't interesting either The unmapping never felt real, this story would definitely work better visually. There was no tension and major pacing issues.

This was so interesting and compelling, and as someone who grew up just outside of New York City, it felt like the world's weirdest nostalgia trip. The idea of an entire city shuffling around each night surprisingly opened the door for a number of heartbreaking and heartwarming story lines. This will absolutely be a book I continue to think about for a very long time.

3.5 stars rounded up

I love this concept and the mysterious buildup around it - New York City (and other parts of the world) in "unmapping" itself - every morning, all of the buildings shift around. You could fall asleep in Brooklyn and wake up on Broadway. You never know where your workplace and apartment may move to next. Multiple POVs let us see the human consequences of this disaster in many diferent ways. But the tenuous cult and Christmas tree connections made this story lose some of its power - I think I would've remained morre invested if it stayed truer to the initial hints about making a stement on climate change and human resiliency.

That said, I'd happily give another book by this author a go, as this is definitely on the right track for me. Thank you to NetGalley and Bindery Books for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review!

What do you do when you wake up one morning, and your house is halfway across the city from where it's supposed to be? This, is the Unmapping. we follow the lives of people who live in this new reality, where nothing stays tethered, and everything changes. power is out, the buildings won't stay put, people are panicking. we follow the lives of people who are selfish, who are frightened, who are desperate, who see this as a new beginning and at the end of it all, we get to see hope for a future. this book was intense, it was brilliant, it was look into how real people might react to an unexplainable event. we get little highs and a lot of lows and how people with terrible lives in the beginning, find peace in a new way of living.

i wll admit, I found the book a little frustrating at times. it seamed to drag in places, but i couldn't stop reading because i HAD to know what happens next. i needed answers, i needed closure! i got... some of that. it was a fantastic book, and it's incredibly unique and the people within it feel so real you might have mistaken them for people in a documentary. it's not my usual kind of book, so while it was engaging and thrilling, i found myself getting bored here and there because it's mostly about people struggling in different ways. if your a big fan of realistic fiction, then this is definitely a book you are going to love!

Thank you to Bindery Books and NetGalley for an advanced copy of The Unmapping.

This book was unique and interesting however I feel it just wasn’t for me and I did DNF it at 40%.

This book is about the “Unmapping” of New York City and focuses on a small group of people who work for the Emergency Management Department and their personal experience and the emotional impact it causes them.

I was expecting more on the Unmapping disaster story and the unprecedented chaos it created for the city and citizens and the frontline kind of accidents, issues and stories as they unfolded.

This would be more enjoyable for those that are more interested in intricate and individual character stories.

I found I got lost in these extended character stories and they felt disjointed and irrelevant. Unfortunately the characters felt flat to me and I just didn’t connect with them.

It was the cities Unmapping, sci-fi or magical realism, aspect that lured me into the book but from what I read I found there was very little of details of the chaos and destruction and unrest of the city or the reasoning behind it.

I’m sure this will be an enjoyable read for the right audience. 😊

What first pulled me in was the concept. New York City wakes up to find its buildings rearranged overnight, with no explanation. Then it happens again. And again.

This is a literary speculative debut that focuses on two emergency response workers trying to hold a shifting city together. It explores themes of control, identity, climate anxiety, and instability through a character-focused lens.

While the story didn’t fully land for me, the premise is one that readers who enjoy surreal world-building and slower, introspective storytelling may find intriguing.