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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 conversational, 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!