Atlas of Unknowable Things: A Book Review

I love a good suspense. Bonus points if there’s a bookish main character. Even more bonus points if it feels reminiscent of Gothic literature. Atlas of Unknowable Things gets all the bonus points because it features a young woman, hoping to finish her doctoral thesis and ends up getting caught up in the supernatural. The fact that she is a skeptic and refuses to accept it at first adds a bit of levity to the narrative. This novel also has quite a cozy feel.

I received an ARC of Atlas of Unknowable Things by McCorkmick Templeman in exchange for an honest review.

Robin Quain is a historian who just had all her work stolen and published by a man that she thought loved her. In order to redeem herself as well as take her mind of the betrayal, she decides to go to a small college, hoping to meet a professor who may have the key to her current research. Robin applies for a residency and gets it. However, when Robin arrives at Hildegard College, she discovers that the professor she was so excited to meet disappeared last year. Yet then she is told to move into that selfsame professor’s cottage…a cottage that still has all the professor’s things in it.

As you might imagine, this novel is creepy and nerdy and also a fair amount of cringe that comes with a realistic bookish character. The cover is also stunning, in my opinion.

Stars: 4.5/5

One thing that is not exactly part of the narrative, but helped me to enjoy the novel is the fact that it is set up like a thesis paper, with sections and subsections. Another thing that got me into this novel is the way that the protagonist nerds out over her favorite subjects. I think that all nerds, regardless of what kind of nerd you may be, enjoy sharing their favorite subjects. Templeman was able to match that energy and get it perfect on the page. Robin is also very stubborn in a way many academics are and while I was screaming in my head to tell her to get the heck away from that college, I knew that she wouldn’t because she felt she had a point to prove.

Over the course of the novel Robin realizes that not only could her weird dreams be more than that, but everything she’s known (including about herself) is a lie. What eldritch horrors hide in the woods? Why was she attacked? And will she ever be able to leave? While it may take a bit to get into this novel, it is definitely one that I would recommend reading.

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(I actually thought of one specific person the moment I started reading this! You know who you are…add it to your TBR…Do it!)