Guys, I think I like speculative fiction! This was my first real foray into the genre, and I’m so glad it was. This started out weird and got weirder throughout, but the way it was done made me ask so many questions and really got my brain working. Amidst the chaos of the disaster at hand the author did a great job of providing perspectives of characters that felt incredibly real. Not good people, not bad people, just people navigating an unprecedented time. It made me think of how I would respond in this kind of situation and what I would deem most important in my life.

I really enjoyed the completely new premise mixed into a very familiar setting. Who can say that in the last five years they haven’t experienced “unprecedented” times? I finished the book wondering about the importance of a sense of self and a sense of community. Two very important elements of life and yet two of the most overlooked. Ok, I’m feeling like I’m about to slip too far into the philosophical so I’ll stop there.

I do have to admit that while reading the emergency services sections, I had to shut off the part of my brain that used to be one of those nerds behind a computer during emergency response operations. There were absolute inconsistencies with how actual response operations would have worked in the real world, particularly with how much decision making power the mayor has, but I digress it added to the story. And this is a work of fiction.

Now, about the book itself, I really enjoyed it overall and the ending was strong. Heck, the ending left me confused but okay with the understanding that I don’t have to understand everything. I loved the feeling of just being thrust into these complex character’s lives and only learning the bare minimum about their past selves. My only criticism is that the middle of the book felt like it meandered a little. There were some perspectives that dragged and a couple inner monologues that could have used some editing down in my opinion. Other than that, my complaints were minimal.

If you’re looking to dip your tow into speculative fiction, this is a great starter! Just be ready to not get all the answers or for anyone’s story to be wrapped up in a perfect bow. Much like life, you get the sense their stories aren’t over. I will absolutely be looking for more books written by Robbins in the future.

The concept behind this novel intrigued me, which is the only reason I requested to read it. The execution of the Unmapping unfortunately reminded me of the Happening. Interesting concept, undesirable execution, and incredibly unlikable main characters. I spent the entire book wondering if Robbins wanted to reader to like Esme and Arjun? No, right?

I found this book to be the worst I've read in a while regarding representation of female characters. Esme thinks in repetitive fragments and 99.98% of those thoughts are about Marcus. I honestly started to think a) Marcus wasn't real and b) Esme's own thoughts wouldn't pass the Bechdel test. She obsessed over him so much I started to understand why the guy was avoiding her. Her thoughts were disturbing to read.

In terms of other female characters: we get the woman who missed her date with Rick. Broke with no phone, she's still just thinking about this missed date with a guy she's never met in person. Then we have the mayor obsessing over the guy she's having an affair with. We also have the wife of a doomsday prepper, you guessed it, obsessing over when her husband will return.

Arjun is a concerning portrayal of a mentally unwell character. The world (lbr, New York mainly) is falling apart and he's obsessing over a crush. It adds to my chief issue with this book: nothing feels real.

I thought this was meant to show that civilians tend to downplay disaster until it's too late and instead they focus on trivial things like workplace romance. But, when that's SO much of the novel, the disaster takes a serious backseat. It just didn't make for interesting or entertaining reading.

The only part of this I found somewhat interesting was the story of the kid trapped under (in?) a building. If the entire story centered around that perhaps as a representation of how the city's planning for emergencies completely broke down, maybe I would've found this more interesting. Instead, this novel feels like when someone's trying to tell you a story and they just keep going down tangents to explain about the parents and hobbies of random people you've never heard or nor care about.

It just felt like messy story telling. I acknowledge this writing style is 100% not my favorite so that added to me enjoying this a lot less than others.

Denise S. Robbins’ The Unmapping is a novel that lingers long after the last page—a haunting, poetic meditation on how climate change reshapes not just our world, but our personal histories and identities. Blending elements of speculative fiction with deep emotional resonance, Robbins crafts a story that is as urgent as it is beautifully written.

At its heart, The Unmapping follows a protagonist grappling with shifting landscapes—both external and internal. As coastlines disappear and familiar places are swallowed by rising waters, so too are the maps of memory that once anchored them. Robbins’ prose is stunning, her descriptions so vivid that you can almost feel the ground slipping away beneath your feet.

What sets this novel apart is its exploration of how change—whether environmental or personal—forces us to reconsider what we hold onto and what we must let go of. It’s a story about resilience, adaptation, and the deep, sometimes painful connections between people and place.

If you’re drawn to books that make you think, feel, and see the world a little differently, The Unmapping is a must-read. It’s timely, lyrical, and profoundly moving—perfect for anyone who has ever felt the weight of an uncertain future and wondered how to find their way through it.

The Unmapping offers a fascinating premise with New York City’s buildings rearranging overnight, but the execution doesn’t fully deliver. While the shifting city and its chaos provide a solid foundation for exploration, the character development feels flat, and the plot sometimes gets lost in too many perspectives and unresolved subplots. The environmental and political themes feel underdeveloped, making it a thought-provoking but not entirely satisfying read.

I had a hard time connecting with the main characters. I had high hopes with the unique premise but felt it did not deliver.

The entire concept of The Unmapping is such an unique one. But I think I went in with the wrong expectation for it. I expected it to be a disaster story that covers the chaos that comes with the unmapping and society adaptation to it but it wasn’t really. The writing was more than fine but I think what didn’t get to me or what I found myself indifferent to were the characters we were presented with. Overall it was a fine novel with an interesting idea, I am curious to see what Robbins come up with after this one though.

The Unmapping has a unique premise that I was really excited about, but I expected more of a true disaster story rather than a bureaucratic and personal drama set against the chaos. The ever-shifting city was fascinating; unfortunately, I didn’t really care for any of the characters. The concept kept me reading, but I never fully connected.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Bindery Books for providing an eARC of The Unmapping prior to publication.

I really liked the premise of this book, and that’s for sure what kept me reading. The ending isn’t completely concrete but it’s satisfying enough. One thing I noticed is that all the women were miserable until they relied on a man, and this was written by a woman so that’s disappointing. I know this isn’t a corrected copy, so the format could change when published, but it was rough. Each page was either formatted horribly or was one solid paragraph. The stream-of-consciousness worked for me in this book, but the huge blocks of text were cumbersome.

I received this from net galley in exchange for a review.

Despite a very promising premise, the Unmapping was too messy for me to enjoy.

Now you might think messy books can be fun, sometimes that's exactly what a narrative or protagonist needs, but this was just everywhere... At first, I just though this wasn't for me but would definitely appeal to another audience, but the thing is I don't really understand who would that be now. The Unmapping is unable to pick what it wants to be and leaves us in an uncomfortable, unsatisfying in-between, closer to nothingness than to anything else. Oscillating between quirky, lighthearted and dramatic, vaguely political sci-fi, it tries to be everything all at once and it just leaves the reader confused. I couldn't get into the stories mostly because of that, the tone kept shifting and it made everything feel artificial and unimportant. The narration itself felt that way as well, I found it formulaic and flat, trying so hard to be cool and edgy but ending up very repetitive and simply tiring to read. It kept every storyline at armlength and, although it work perfectly fine for the secondary plots, it made the two protagonists povs unimmersive and therefore boring. I think one of its problem was that it couldn't differentiate actions from descriptions from commentaries and just laid everything on the same level.
I really enjoyed the quick glances at other characters, the way they remained nameless at first, mimicking the anonymity of the big city. It was simply fun and suited the circonstances so well, showing effectively the impact of the unmapping in unexpected ways. I could have read 20 more of these. The writing was also more balanced in those parts and somehow I ended up caring much more of these characters than for Edme & Arjun. I do think coming back to these characters all the time and tying their stories to the main one was a mistake and it would have been more effective to continue displaying only snippets of random people throughout the whole book. It helped us understand the situation and its implications in the "show don't tell" books need. But I recognise this is just a matter of personal taste and I see why other readers would prefer to get to know secondary characters' fate.
As for the main characters... Were we supposed to hate them both ? Edme had simply no personality, no character at all. The way she just flips her mind at the end was so abrupt and puzzling, it just felt convenient to the story. [Which again couldn't decide that genre to be and was now a romance ?] And Arjun was an opportunistic creep. I couldn't have cared less about any of them which is a shame because their jobs could have made a really interesting story.

2/5

Arc provided by the published through Netgalley.

I thoroughly enjoyed this story. It was unique and really made me think about what I was reading. It took me some time to connect with the characters, but once I really got into the story, I enjoyed it.

“You have to really look at a place, for among time, to see it clear…I know the opposite is also true, I’m guessing it’s that way with you, you loved this place so hard you turned blind.”

The Unmapping isn’t a book about Emergency Management and broken systems that are trying their best regardless. It isn’t a book about grief, trauma, or the ever changing nature of reality. It isn’t even really about community and the inevitable flaws of humanity in close contact. It’s all of those, and something so much more.

I love surrealism because it forces your brain into taking this obsene, absurd premise of a city shuffling its buildings around, as straight fact. You step over the initial hump of shock and awe and into the world with parallels to reality you can’t even fully grasp. At least that’s what happens for me. The reality is that this version of the end of the world probably isn’t going to happen but we as readers and as humans living in modern post-capitalism have already experienced the end of the world over and over and over again.

What’s next is the interesting part. When we figure out how to get into the nitty gritty dirt band work of hurting each other and asking forgiveness. Causing new problems by fixing old ones. Holding hands across the street to stand up against chaos and indifference. We live in a society and part of the reason our messy culture loves to write stories set in NYC is because its parallels to that society are so clear. Cities are the place where chaos and order smash into each other, gridded roads coming right up to the edge of a river that isn’t a river. Boroughs and neighborhoods that are so culturally defined they forgot where the geographic boundaries are supposed to be. So many people standing on the same street corner each wrapped in their own bubble of anonymity. These dicotomies aren’t opposites, they are continuations. Contradictions are the only way we’re going to save the world, by letting it end again and again.

this book is glorious and while writing this review I bumped my rating from 4.5 to 5⭐️ Thank you for sharing.

The Unmapping is an interesting look at the experience of living in New York City after a disaster. The new adult main characters navigate (literally) a changed world and their places in it. Accessible writin and hopeful undertones- I will be looking for more from this debut author..

I really enjoyed this strange, curious story. Thank you Net Galley and Bindery Books for the advanced reader copy!

I have so many mixed feelings about this book. I really did enjoy the parts where we got to explore more of the plot in regards to the unmapping, and also really enjoyed the authors writing style, but had some major issues, especially with the characters.
I am someone whose favorite part of a book is usually the characters, so having the characters be generally unlikeable (to me, at least) made it very difficult to get into this book. I did appreciate that the two main characters were written in a unique and even realistic way that spoke to different issues we often see in the world. We had someone who seemed to care more about social media and the performative aspect and idea of being seen as a hero than he did about actually making a difference and another person whose whole identity was wrapped up in her job and her relationship to the point where she had completely lost any sense of who she was as an individual and was unable to cope when these things were removed from her life. But while I found those characterizations interesting, I really disliked the characters themselves, and reading from their point of view and being inside of their heads was not an enjoyable experience, especially during the first half of the book.
About halfway through, we started to delve into the unmapping a little more, which I really enjoyed. The ways all the different characters and storylines were weaving together were really interesting, and I really liked all of the other smaller side plots that were being brought in. It all made me more invested in the story, and I got through the second half pretty quickly, wanting to see how everything would come together. Unfortunately, I didn't find the ending particularly satisfying either. I wasn't a fan of how the characters ended their stories, and the story regarding the unmapping also felt a little unfinished, possibly because it felt like so much more of the book was dedicated to the characters.
Overall, I felt like having the focus of the book be on the characters rather than this really unique and interesting idea weakened the story a lot, but I'd still be interested to read more from this author in the future as I did really enjoy her writing.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I was so intrigued by the concept and cover here, but just could not find my way into the story... I struggle with dystopian novels, especially lately given the state of the world, and this is largely what I think I struggled with here. It's a tough story - dark and heavy - and there are a lot of characters and I had a tough time connecting to the individual components as well as the story as a whole. This one wasn't a good fit for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and Bindery Books for giving me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
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The Unmapping is story in which women rely entirely on men for their sense of self, nobody learns anything, and there are no consequences. Yes, it is as frustrating as it sounds. Spoilers follow.

The strength of this book is mostly in the central event of the Unmapping itself. There are an infinite number of interesting stories to be told, particularly from the NYC Emergency Management Department, struggling to deal with the crisis as it first unfolds. We do get to see some of those stories, and that is where the book is at its best, in the early days.

It was the characters that bothered me the most, though, especially the weirdly sexist depiction of women. Esme, an Emergency Management team leader, is shown to be a capable and intelligent person in her own right, with a strong sense of responsibility to the city—so why does that all get sidelined in place of her having an emotional breakdown over her fiancé going missing, realizing that she basically can’t function without him and never has? It undercuts her character so fundamentally. She only really starts to come alive again when she starts dating Arjun, another protagonist and Emergency Department worker, who she has been unkind to the entire book until that point very close to the end. Whether intentionally or not, she is portrayed as needing a man to keep her stable, which just felt gross.

Rosemary, another female character, literally waits for her husband to get home every day to tell her what to do and devoted her life entirely to his interests, but the narrative doesn’t explore her getting a newfound sense of freedom when he disappears. No, instead she’s pretty immediately seduced by a cult and becomes indoctrinated, before conveniently getting free and immediately going back to her husband, who helps her start to get better. The narrative fails to actually challenge her status in any way, actually making it seem like she needs a man to survive, like Esme.

And Arjun is an incompetent fool with a crush on an engaged woman, careless and driven entirely by emotion, but always magically succeeds despite being pretty objectively creepy.

I did not like these people, Esme was at least interesting to read but no character truly changes or faces consequences here. There are no stakes, and no one learns anything. The mayor of New York City magically disappears near the end of the book and is revealed to be hiding out in New Jersey, dating a married man with no repercussions. It’s just so difficult to care.

And then there’s the hamfisted environmental component of the story. We never get a definitive answer on what causes the Unmapping, but the widely accepted explanation in-universe is that it has some vague ties to climate change and pollution. This just annoyed me. Climate change is brought up but nothing is actually said about it. It feels like the author wanted to try and get an environmental message in without actually committing to one. I’m not bothered by not knowing fully what caused the Unmapping, but I am bothered by a lazy message like “pollution is bad.”

There were other issues, like jarring tone shifts—this book couldn’t decide if it wanted to be lighthearted or serious, grounded or fantastical—and not committing to wrapping up certain stories, but my largest issues really were the characters.

I was very disappointed by this one.

2/5 aluminum Christmas trees.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bindery to be able to read this early!!

I have never enjoyed a book where I disliked almost the entire cast of characters until this one. The concept of becoming unmapped and untethered to what is important to you is really unsettling. I honestly don’t know how I’d react to it.

What ended up not working for me was how much telling versus showing we got. Don’t get me wrong!! I did enjoy the chatty feel of the narration and with the swapping of perspectives, it seemed necessary. But I really enjoyed when we switched to the side characters because it was through moments they had with the main characters where the reflection worked.

Anyway! I don’t think this book will be for everyone. And that’s okay! I’d honestly love more sci fi concepts written by the author because while this wasn’t a perfect book for me, I finished it during a single flight. It was engaging and kept my attention.

Wow! This book absolutely blew me away. I knew from reading the description it was going to be different, and I don't want to give anything away, just know that you want to read this book!

The Unmapping was one of my most anticipated books for 2025, due to its very unique and intriguing premise (and not to mention, stunning cover). And I do think it delivered. The setting is New York, and one day the city wakes up to every single building having moved, and this continues to happen every day at 4 am. This becomes known as The Unmapping. Since the buildings themselves move but not their surrounding plot, many buildings are cut off from their gas and electricity lines. Many people go missing as well as they leave their houses in the morning as usual, only to not find their way back at the end of the day, and one boy is caught underground. What ensues is a very disorienting life as the city and its inhabitants try to figure out what's going on, how everyone is affected, and how to create a new normal.

We mainly follow Esme and Arjun. Esme is a woman who works at the Emergency Management Department and whose job is to try and manage some of this crisis. Her fiancé is a journalist who is the person to first expose that this very phenomenon has happened before in a small town. There is a sub-plot as well about this town and the strange things going on there (major cult vibes), beyond just the Unmapping. Once The Unmapping comes to New York, he is one of the people who go missing. Our other main character is my favourite — Arjun, a lonely, fedora wearing man who also works at the Emergency Management Department, but more on the ground. They are friends, and Arjun is in love with Esme without her knowledge.

The writing style is quite simple yet effective and distinctive in a way I can't quite put my finger on. It's very straightforward, and poses a lot of questions throughout in a bit of a stream of consciousness way. The pacing lies somewhere in the middle. Because it's so easy to read, it keeps drawing me forward and I keep wanting to pick it up to find out what's going to happen, yet sometimes not much actually happens. It's not a very plot driven book, despite this very intriguing event. It's more like studies of these characters all drawn together by this crazy event — how they are affected by it and respond to it. One interesting writing device Robbins uses is that she doesn't always give the side characters names, which to me feels like a way of showing that these are just one response, or one experience out of millions affected by this. I found myself wishing some side plots had more space to be explored, especially the one around the first town to be Unmapped, and the journalist living there, I found that story very interesting but it was left a little unfinished.

Overall a very solid debut novel, 4.25. I’ve never before heard of a similar premise, and it was a very interesting lightly sci-fi twist on more realistic climate fiction with some interesting societal analyses. I would be very keen to read more from this author in the future. Thank you so much to the publisher for providing me with the e-ARC!

An imaginative plot but the follow-through is very poor.

Esme & Arjun, the principal characters in the story, work in the emergency services in NY. Esme sees an explosion at a coffee shop and sets action in motion. Arjun is an emergency worker always looking to step in and help people. He stays in In NY with his dad. His parents are separated with his mom being in India. Both Esme & Arjun are taken aback when an ‘Unmapping’ occurs where entire blocks of the city shift around. This had first happened in a town in Wisconsin. The Empire State Building ends up in Coney Island, and the shift is not one-time. It looks like there will be parts which will shift into the sea. Other cities across the world are to follow. People are distraught, emergency services overwhelmed, radical gangs form, and the political governance is in disarray. Esme’s boyfriend Marcus is nowhere to be seen.

The concept is brilliant but is almost entirely let down by the writing. The character development is poor. Though the broad contours of Esme & Arjun’s characters are interesting, they are very flat characters. The relationships in the book go nowhere and is especially disappointing since the scenario provides an ideal backdrop for good character development & relationships. I found the narrative to be listless, though some of the incidents which follow are interesting.

Overall, a book which falls way short of potential.

My rating: 2.5 / 5.