UNMET is a dystopian, fairytale retelling of GREAT EXPECTATIONS. Dickens meets Kazuo Ishiguro in this science fiction love story with a dash of magic.

It has been decades since humanity fought—and won—a war against AI and its poisonous lies. In a world still relearning Truth, young Suri Phillips yearns to be a famous journalist and use the power of words in the service of human well-being. But she is poor and shackled to an unsupportive family, and lacks the resources to chase her dream until, at age thirteen, she encounters a mysterious fugitive who gives her a choice: help him out ofhis predicament or he will kill her family. Suri saves his life. The fugitive, whose mystery deepens with each passing moment, makes her a secret deal and promises a breathtaking reward on her twenty-fifth birthday provided she can meet his immense expectations.

Although this trauma leaves Suri forever looking over her shoulder, her ambition attracts the attention of the powerful Avis Family, which summons her to meet Elle Avis, the adopted daughter of billionaire recluse Hatshepsut Avis. Though Elle is icy and manipulative, an earnest friendship grows as Elle’s desire to learn her parentage captivates Suri, whose own mother died when she was two. All the while, Hatshepsut is scheming. Consumed by grandiose ideas about Elle’s future, she pays for Suri’s education—expecting a return on her investment when Suri becomes a journalist.

In college, the girls’ friendship deepens, and Suri, believing that only Elle can understand her, falls in love. Their romance is fraught, however, and jeopardizes the extraordinary reward promised by the fugitive. As she navigates this dilemma, the snare she unwittingly laid for herself at age thirteen begins to tighten around her. Suri and Elle’s destinies are indeed linked, but the long shadow of the past and their unequal prospects in the future have pitted them against each other. When Elle recognizes that childhood trauma—being abandoned by her parents and raised by a narcissistic adoptive mother—has left her incapable of feeling love, Suri pursues the one truth her beloved has always desired—the knowledge of her origins. But that might prove an expectation better left unmet.