Book: Tilt
Author: Emma Pattee
Publisher: Marysue Rucci Books
Year: 2025
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “Annie is nine moths pregnant. She’s shopping for a crib at Ikea. That’s when the massive earthquake hits. There’s nothing to do but walk.
Set over the course of one day – a heart-racing debut about a woman facing the unimaginable and trying to get to safety.”

Review : To be honest, I don’t remember requesting this ARC and had I known what it was about, I’m certain I wouldn’t have. And, while I try to be as objective as possible with how I review books, in truth the score I gave this book is, at least in part, a reflection of how I feel about natural disaster storylines – that is to say, I hate them.

There were so many aspects of this book that made it feel too real for me. Not only is the narrator my age, her husband is my partner’s age, and their struggle felt like a carnival mirror reflection of our own struggle. The entirety of Tilt might best be described as a millennial existential dystopian nightmare. We follow Annie through the literal earth shattering event she lives through on the day of the earthquake, but we also bounce back and forth between her life before marriage, pregnancy, and stalling out midway through her 30s, stuck and unable to move forward thanks to an unstable economy and a husband who cannot find meaningful work. Truly, this book is a millennial hellscape nightmare not many of us are capable of crawling our way out of, and to add to it the specter of a city-leveling earthquake…oof. This novel made me physically ill to read, I’m not even exaggerating. It made me nauseous. I’m going to say something I rarely say about books here : I hated it. And maybe that was Pattee’s intent, it sure seemed so, at least; perhaps that’s not worth lowering the score of this book any further. I believe I felt exactly what I was meant to feel when I read this book, but sadly I don’t enjoy reading things that make me ill. I put them down and never pick them back up again. Which is exactly what I’ll do with Tilt. I read it, it’s over, we won’t be returning.

There are further reasons beyond the visceral reaction I had to Tilt that attributed to the 3.5 star rating I gave this book, so let’s talk about them. First, while I know this is an advanced copy, I did find several inconsistencies in the story telling that served to take me directly out of the fictional reality Pattee created. We’re told over and over again that Annie is wearing a romper, so many times throughout the novel do we hear about Annie’s romper, that when she has someone feel her stomach by putting their hand under her shirt, it was with some relief that I was immediately yanked right out of the story. We also find Annie using the restroom in a looted gas station, a gas station where the electricity has gone out, and yet she closes the bathroom door and in the complete darkness is able to see the blood and dust coating her legs and shoes. I’ve been in many a public restroom where the lights are out (though, not from an earthquake, I assure you!), I can’t bring myself to understand how she was able to see clearly in a closed room with no lighting. Finally, perhaps my number one grievance with the entire story : the book begins with a map of Portland: where Annie lives, where she and her husband work, and where the earthquake takes place. I’m always grateful for a map, particularly if there’s travel involved, I like to flip back and forth and see where our characters are going, get a visual understanding of what’s going on. But the map Pattee provided for us is wildly lacking – there are so many chapters that are headlined by the cross streets Annie finds herself at, but those cross streets are almost exclusively not included in the map. Why bother including a map at all if a huge portion of the book’s landmarks aren’t even on the map in the first place? Either include a map with the cross streets you took your time to tell us about, or don’t include a map at all. This frustration alone was enough to make me drop this book’s rating to 3.5 – do it right or don’t do it. Period.

*** Spoilers Ahead ***

Finally, this book ends the way a realistic natural disaster might end – without a happy ending. There’s no bow tied up at the end of this book for us, and while I generally prefer a book to move me rather than give me something unrealistic, in some situations it might be preferable to finding out our main character’s husband has probably died, crushed under the weight of a building he wasn’t even supposed to be at that day. It might be preferable to the day-of earthquake delivery she gives to her baby in the woods near her apartment, uncertain if anyone she knows is even alive, if her building is even standing, and with absolutely no means of getting to a hospital for care. I hated every part of this book. From start to finish. Hated it.

And listen, I read that Pattee is a climate activist and writer for several bigger publications, she should know that doom and gloom surrounding climate change actually have the opposite impact on most people. Scenarios where we see the worst of the worst played out turn people off to the very real dangers of climate change – we can’t handle the anxiety and dread someone like Pattee piles on top of us while we simultaneously live through horror after horror. This novel did not have a profound impact on me beyond making me wish I’d never read it. It certainly didn’t make me want to care more about climate change (and trust me when I say I already do. A lot.). It did make me want to huck this book at the wall and tell all my friends not to read it. We’re already existing amongst the horrors. We don’t need a reminder of how much worse it could be. Many of us are already doing the work, engaging grassroots efforts, and attempting to make the world a better place in our own ways; piling additional, fictional, horrors onto the situation makes things worse. I will die on this hill.

Advice : If you have anxiety of any kind, if you have fears about climate change, if you’re a millennial, if you or someone you know is struggling to find work, if you find yourself priced out of the housing market, if you got married because you needed health insurance or maybe your partner did, do not read this book. Trust me. Don’t read it. It isn’t worth it. Your mental health will thank you for not reading this one.