A Guide to Falling Off the Map by Zanni L Arnot

Title: A Guide to Falling Off the Map

Author: Zanni L Arnot

Genre: Contemporary

Publisher: Hachette Australia

Published: 26^th August 2025

Format: Paperback

Pages: 400

Price: $19.99

Synopsis: A funny, tender, messy, and authentic story about two teens who fall in love on the precipice of things falling apart.
Vinnie Smith has her future mapped. She and her best friend, Lilah, have been busy manifesting post-graduation lives in NYC. Making plans helps Vinnie avoid thinking about losing her mum to multiple sclerosis, and other problems weighing on her mind.

Meanwhile, Roo Carpenter, Vinnie’s longtime childhood friend, is struggling day-to-day, never mind plans for tomorrow. He’s dropped out of high school under the guise of studying photography, when the truth is he’s working a dodgy job to help his mum make ends meet.

When Vinnie’s carefully laid plans begin to unravel, she decides to fix Roo’s problems instead of her own, care of a road trip across inland Australia in her mum’s old Kombi. But what Vinnie and Roo don’t count on is how close to the surface Vinnie’s grief over her mum is, or how her worsening headaches have a worrying familiarity. Plus, they’re having these embarrassing, absolutely-not-friend-appropriate feelings for one another . . . ones that could completely ruin their friendship if the other finds out.

A Guide to Falling Off the Map is a tender and insightful YA novel about two teens who fall together on the precipice of things falling apart. Perfect for fans of Biffy James, Nina Kenwood and E. Lockhart

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Friends are what make life meaningful, and when you’re young, you have your whole life ahead of you. You have plans, things you’ve decided will be happening in certain ways. Vinnie and Roo have been friends forever, and now they’re at the end of high school. Well, Vinnie is, and as year 11 starts, she finds her world crumbling. She sees everything she’s worked for fall away from her, she’s having dizzy spells and double vision, and she’s still coping with losing her mum to suicide two years ago. She’s worried she has MS like her mum too. But she doesn’t want it to interfere with her dreams and manifestation of a future in NYC with her best friend, Lilah.

Roo left school at the end of year ten, determined to study photography at TAFE and get a job at a local studio. His mum hurt her back, and they’re living pay check-to-pay check, even as Roo works for cash under the table in a dodgy job, for a very dodgy person. Roo should be following his dreams, especially when hers start to fall apart, shredded into bits. Fixing Roo’s problems during a camping trip in her um’s old Kombi feels like the right thing to do for Vinnie.

A Guide to Falling off the Map is a novel about navigating grief, friendship, and the changes in our lives we have no control over. These changes can be finishing school, our plans crumbling or our health affecting how we see the future, as well as the people we don’t expect to meet or connect with. Vinnie and Roo both have their challenges throughout the novel, and a past that is coming back to them. A past where their families went on holidays together before Vinnie’s mum took her life. A past where Vinnie and Roo didn’t feel like things were falling apart completely, and where they knew where they were headed in life. Vinnie’s dream of New York and Julliard has fractured ever since she missed out on something important to her at school and was cut out of the things she needed to make it work. Roo just wants to get by and help his mum, even if it means giving up on his dreams.

The novel slowly builds, going back and forth between Vinnie and Roo. This allows the reader to find out about them as individuals and put the clues together as the the action builds towards the decision to go on the road trip. It feels sudden to the people around them, but allowing the problems that lead to it to explode, Zanni ensures that the reader understands their motives. She captures the complicated high school and end of high school, and the different ways people can be, or can feel betrayed by friends, by teachers. By the people they thought were in their corner, and also by their bodies. Any disabled or chronically ill person will understand that aspect of Vinnie’s story as well. Zanni has managed to capture the feelings, the worry, and the ways Vinnie copes so well, and done so well with making sure she got everything right.

Vinnie and Roo’s journey is filled with friendship, memories, grief and a touch of romance, though I did feel that their friendship was more powerful and important as Vinnie learned to navigate life without Lilah, and without her old dreams. Finding a new purpose was something powerful, showing teen and adult readers that you can always change your dreams and achieve your goals, even if it means taking a different path. The grief within the story is palpable, highlighting that a lot of people don’t know how to respond to grief or deal with it, or how to talk about it. It’s a testament to the different ways people respond to illness, poverty and the circumstances that we have no control over. Because everyone responds or reacts differently. Everyone’s challenges in this book are raw and realistic. Their feelings are something that readers will be able to relate to and find comfort in. It is an unexpected comfort despite its sadder moments, because it is reassuring to know that whatever we are going through that we are not alone, and the fears of not knowing what the future is going to be like is something people of all ages can understand. Especially in the teen years when things are amplified and feel bigger, when they can be bigger and more dramatic. I loved this book, and it’s the kind of book that I wish I had been able to read as teen, and it took me right back to those days as well. A fantastic young adult debut for Zanni L Arnot!