This book was absolutely brilliant. I’m just sitting here, bobbing in its wake, floating on that sublime feeling I only get from reading transcendent literary fiction. 

Books like The Unmapping are why I continue to request books by authors I’ve never heard of and that sound a little crazy. It’s books like these that remind me why I truly love reading: I opened it to see if today was the day I’d read it and was immediately sucked in. I read voraciously throughout the day. I skipped lunch. 

Of course this book had to be set in New York. It’s one of the most-photographed cities in the world, with one of the largest populations, has some of the most recognizable landmarks on a global scale, and already has some of the most impressive disaster coordination and response measures in place. What better place to set a novel that plays a screwed-up game of Perfection! with its characters? You’d need a large city that would challenge the reader in the best ways. That’s New York. 

In the beginning chapters of this book I said something about how the writing felt like Erin Morgenstern was writing a speculative eco thriller (which would undoubtedly be cool by me), but as I got further and further into the book, this feeling gave way to a more distilled feeling of this book belonging to Robbins alone, with brisk pacing, insightful narrative voices, entertaining dialogue, absolutely delightful worldbuilding, fantastic characters, and we can’t forget the plot (which is a dream for someone like me, who wanted to be a crisis manager at one point and has a degree in urban planning). 

It’s diverse, fun, thought-provoking, well-written, and I bet you’ll see it on my best-of list at the end of the year. 5⭐️

I was provided a copy of this title by the author and publisher via Netgalley. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.

File Under: 5 Star Review/Literary Fiction/Speculative Fiction