3.5 stars

Inland by Kate Risse is speculative fiction taking place after parts of the US have been overtaken by climate crisis and flooding. There are also other speculative elements at play throughout such as mobile phones being eradicated due to (what seems like) propaganda and fear-mongering, making communication during this disaster very limited.

Juliet and Martin are both married (to other people) and their families live next door to each other. They are separated from said families due to an extra-marital trip that occurs at the same time as the floods. Juliet's son, Billy, is home by himself and doesn't know where his father and brother are, or that there has even been a disaster until he emerges from the family's basement. Juliet allowed Billy to keep his phone when the rest were surrendered if he agreed to keep it hidden and it is now the only connection he has to his mother. The narrative switches first-person perspectives between Juliet, travelling with Martin to try to get home, and Billy, who finds company against his will after a lot of nagging with Martin's daughters who are also home alone.

Inland is essentially a boiling pot of tension: between Juliet and Martin about how they will explain their whereabouts, between Juliet and Billy as limited phone signal leaves a lot of room for misunderstanding, between Billy and Martin's family who he feels are hiding something. This is all compounded on top of each character's stress over the recent events and fear for the future. The author did a great job of showing how this kind of stress effects everyone differently (some will close of, some will seek to help others, some will get angry, etc.) and Juliet and Martin cross paths will people from all along this spectrum on their journey. I like the balance of plot-driven and character-driven elements and I think in that regard this is a great example of what makes speculative fiction different to dystopians.

A couple of things I really struggled with was the switching perspectives and the choices characters made in an attempt to stretch the story further. It's really important to me when I'm reading different first-person perspectives that each character has a unique voice and it is easily identifiable. I don't feel like the author's voice changed when writing for Juliet and Billy bar a few instances where Billy's speech/thoughts seemed to be intentionally youthful. I also felt really frustrated because Juliet and Martin kept making stupid and unrealistic decisions which served no other purpose than stoking drama and making their journey longer. Sure, it can be argued that you don't know what decisions you'd make in life-or-death circumstances until you're in it, but it definitely felt forced to me.

Overall I think this book has a lot of promise! It would also be a good introduction to speculative fiction as it's really easy to follow.

Inland is a cli-fi novel where the sea levels rise with no notice leaving people stranded and underwater all along the coasts. This book follows Juliet and her neighbour Martin, who get stranded somewhere along the southern coast and need to make their way back to Boston to their children. I really liked the premise for this book but the characters fell extremely flat for me I didn't care about any of them, so what if they drown in the rising water? Again cool premise but negative points for the POVs and time jumping.

Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for providing me with an arc for an honest review.

Wow, just wow!!! This book kept me on the edge of my seat from beginning to end. You will fall in love with the family's and not want the book to end.

As someone who grew up in coastal South Carolina and works as an earth scientist, I was eager to dive into Inland, intrigued by its premise and the potential exploration of climate driven disaster. However, this is not a sci-fi novel, nor does it deeply engage with the science behind such an event. In fact, some elements of the story, like the smartphone ban which is never explained other than "they are causing cancer", veer into debunked conspiracy territory, which was disappointing.

At its core, this is a story about a mother’s determination to reunite with her son, told through alternating POVs. While I appreciated the themes of perseverance and the emotional depth of their journey, both characters lacked any survival instincts and made frustratingly poor decisions along the way. I do very much enjoy an ambiguous ending, leaving the door open. Ultimately, I was let down by the misrepresentation of the book as sci-fi, but as a story of endurance and human connection, it had its moments.

*spoilers*

Well, that was long-winded with only brief moments of feeling the story propelled forward. The reason I give it 2 stars instead of 1 is because things got a bit more exciting once the teenagers rally together to move inland. But that was it. We never get any answer to why the entire Eastern Seaboard is flooding, only a little bit of insight to The Ban of smartphones, and we don’t even find out if characters actually make it inland enough to be safe, let alone if the parents find their kids again. For such a long novel, you’d think we’d get a little more answers, but it just felt like a lot of descriptions of sludge-y water and driving through flooded areas.

Thank you to NetGalley and 12 Willows Press for allowing me to be an ARC reader in return for an honest review.