I hate to say it because I love disaster/apocalyptic books, but Charley Hogwood’s The Unraveling is sadly kind of a mess. The book suffers from numerous problems. The story is told in a very passive manner. Mr. Hogwood doesn’t seem to have a handle on the concept of show don’t tell. And while that isn’t a deal breaker for me as I’ve read or listened to a number of books that tell rather than show and still enjoyed the heck out of them The Unraveling also suffers from being severely overwritten. Unfortunately almost none of the characters seem believable. Given what is going on around them, none of them seem to be all that phased by any of it. They are all handling the end of the world as if they were action heroes, constantly joking with each other no matter what is happening. There are also pacing issues. The book starts out promising enough as we get a glimpse that there is about to be a major outbreak, but then the story hits the breaks and the next 3.5 hours what we get is mostly a group of people discussing the potential need to get prepared for something. But the real issue is continuity. Mr. Hogwood really could have used the help of a developmental editor or at least some beta readers to point out some of these issues. In one chapter we see major signs that society is breaking down, our heroes even witness it, and then the very next chapter they are acting like nothing has or is happening. Then in another couple of chapters we again see signs of mass panic and societal breakdown only to have things seem perfectly normal a chapter or two later. Just saw the neighbor get gunned down by some kind of law enforcement…next chapter it’s as if they completely forgot about it. Early on one of the protagonist’s daughters gets carjacked and needs to be rescued. It’s a violet rescue…and yet none of those involved seem the least bit bothered by what happened or what they did. Worse, we don’t hear about this daughter again until way later in the book….when she calls home from college to tell her dad she’s driving home??? Say what? Isn’t she already at home? The carjacking happened when she and her friends were already on her way home and after she was rescued they brought her and her friend back to their home! I don’t know if maybe Mr. Hogwood wrote some of the chapters out of order and then forgot to reorder them later or what. But like I said an editor or even some beta readers would likely have noticed these kind of things. It’s a shame because I love disaster books and think the core story he was trying to tell could have been decent, it just needed more work. On the plus side, even despite all those complaints I listed, I still enjoyed listening to the book and never once considered giving up on it, mostly due to Andrew Wehrlen’s excellent narration. I was given a free review copy of this audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.