Tilt by Emma Pattee

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📚 Book Review: Tilt by Emma Pattee — When the Hype Hits Hard… and Misses

Rating: ⭐ 1.5/5 (and yes, I’m being generous here)

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🚨 Trigger Warnings

• Pregnancy & childbirth (including solo/unassisted birth)

• Earthquake & natural disaster scenes

• Death of a child (side character)

• Death from injury

• COVID-19 death (family member)

• Violence & assault

• Looting and societal collapse

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🌊 My First Impressions

This book came in so overhyped I expected a literary earthquake of my own. Instead, I got more of a tremor and a lot of… rubble. Yes, I liked the earthquake-as-life-metaphor idea — that was smart. But the ending? Ugh. It was like the author dropped all the plot threads during the quake and forgot to pick them back up. We get no closure on Taylor’s kid, Spencer, Dom, or half the characters we spent the whole book meeting.

I don’t mind abrupt endings when they feel intentional, but here it just felt lazy. The baby was born alive (cool), but then? Nothing. No aftermath. No epilogue. Just a hard stop.

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⚠️ Spoiler Warning: Full Plot Summary Ahead ⚠️

🏠 The Setup

Annie, 35, nine months pregnant, heads to IKEA for a crib on the first day of her maternity leave. She’s broke, cranky, and narrates the whole story to her unborn baby, Bean. Her husband Dom is a struggling actor who works at a café.

She picks out the priciest crib (because why not, debt’s already bad), but the box is missing. Enter Taylor, a snippy IKEA employee who eventually helps Annie locate it — right before a massive earthquake levels the warehouse.

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🌍 The Quake & Chaos

Annie survives the quake thanks to Taylor pulling her from rubble. She sets off on foot toward Dom’s café (no phone, no keys, no clue where he is). Along the way, she sees carnage — derailed trains, collapsed buildings, injured people.

We get flashbacks:

• How Annie met Dom while she was an up-and-coming playwright

• How she gave up her dreams for a steady job

• How Dom never gave up his acting dreams

• Their fight the night before the quake about money vs. career

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☠️ Deaths Along the Way

She tries to help a dying cyclist, Becky, but fails. She scavenges food, milk, and water, relieved when Bean moves again.

She reaches Dom’s café — destroyed — and learns from Gretchen that Dom wasn’t at work but at a rehearsal downtown. And downtown? Completely flattened. Dom lied to her and possibly got himself killed.

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🤝 Partner in Survival

Annie reunites with Taylor, who’s limping and looking for her daughter Gabby at Columbus Elementary. Together they face the collapsed school. Taylor fears a dead child in a yellow poncho is Gabby — but it’s not (it’s another grieving mother’s child). Taylor then crawls into the unstable building to search for Gabby. Annie never sees her again.

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🚧 Roadblocks & Rage

Annie heads downtown to find Dom but is stopped by military at the Morrison Bridge — no entry, and word is Old Town is gone. She turns back toward home.

Along the way:

• She loots snacks and water

• Fends off teenage attackers with a razor blade (yes, she slashes one in the face)

• Goes into labor in Mount Tabor Park

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👶 The Ending

In the forest, alone, she strips down and delivers Bean on the cold ground. She holds the baby against her chest, feeling their warmth and connection.

And… that’s it. No word on Dom, Taylor, Gabby, Spencer, or literally anyone else. Cue reader rage. 😤

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💭 Final Thoughts

This could have been an intense, emotional masterpiece — but it left us stranded in the middle of the narrative wreckage. I was invested, but the payoff was zero. If you like unresolved endings, maybe you’ll vibe with it. Personally? I’m salty.

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📦 Buy it on Amazon (affiliate link)

👉 Tilt by Emma Pattee

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📚 If You Liked This, Try:

• The Road by Cormac McCarthy — bleak but with a more satisfying arc

• Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel — post-apocalyptic but hopeful

• Aftershocks by Nadia Owusu — a memoir blending metaphor and seismic shifts in life