Where We Woke

Upper-YA Science Fiction · Survival Thriller · Dystopian Mystery · By Brandon Rohrbaugh

Strange worlds. Hard choices. Earned answers.

Where We Woke is a sequential survival-mystery series about teenagers and children who wake on an unfamiliar island without their personal pasts and build a functioning society while trying to understand why they are there—and what has changed.

Spoiler-free series page: This page protects the major revelations of Book 1. Start with No One Came After before reading later-book material as it is added.

About the series

Newcomers have appeared irregularly for nearly a year before seventeen-year-old Tomas wakes as the latest arrival. The island already has jobs, rules, alliances, resource systems, history, and conflict. When the arrival pattern changes, Tomas becomes part of a mystery that threatens the assumptions holding the settlement together.

The series combines survival, dangerous unfamiliar ecology, faction and leadership conflict, emotionally important relationships, fair-play mystery, and answers that expand the world rather than simply withholding information.

What to expect

Expect a capable mixed-age youth society, hard survival choices, competing ideas about leadership and truth, dangerous nights, friendship, romance, betrayal, ecological mystery, and major revelations that are earned through clues rather than convenient memory flashes.

Reading order

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No One Came After by Brandon Rohrbaugh book cover
Book 1

No One Came After

Seventeen-year-old Tomas wakes without his personal past on an unfamiliar island where dozens of children and teenagers have already built a functioning settlement. Newcomers have appeared irregularly for nearly a year. After Tomas, the pattern stops—and the questions surrounding the last arrival begin to destabilize the only society he remembers.

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The Names We Had Before by Brandon Rohrbaugh book cover
Where We Woke · Book 2 · Pre-order

The Names We Had Before

The sequential Where We Woke story continues after No One Came After. Releases October 23, 2026.

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Start here

No One Came After is the required starting point. Later books continue the same protagonist, ensemble, relationships, and expanding mystery.