Disaster's Children by Emma Sloley is a so-so wealthy survivalists story incorporating a dystopian setting with a romance and mystery.

Marlo has been raised by her wealthy adoptive parents and a group of other wealthy like-minded survivalists in a secluded community in Oregon. She has lived in the isolated community for 20 years, since she was five. The community was started by doomsday preppers based on the approaching climate change. The residents call the outside world "the Disaster" and although Marlo has made a few trips to the outside world, she has spent most of her time secluded with members of their group. When Marlo finds a dead eagle, which after a search turns into five dead eagles, members are sure it is due to the Disaster outside their ranch.

The synopsis makes this novel sound much more interesting dystopian than it is in reality. The technical quality of the writing is good, richly detailed and descriptive, but Sloley loses track of how to take advantage early on of creating mystery, tension, and intrigue in her story. While the writing is important, ultimately I'm reading novels for the story, the plot. There were several chances to increase the apprehension for the reader when Marlo encounters mysteries and then.... she just moves on. The action didn't really start until I was already bored with and tired of Marlo. (The whole buying a designer dress when she visits NYC with her father on a mission to recruit new members to their enclave made no sense, especially when contrasted with her wanting to leave her sheltered home to work for a eco-group.) She is a very young, sheltered 25 year-old. After powering through the novel, the unanswered questions and cliff hanger at the end clinched the lower rating for me.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Amazon Publishing.

http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2019/10/disasters-children.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3029541703
https://www.librarything.com/work/23214649/book/174842875
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Amazon and Barnes&Noble after publication

I have always been intrigued by cults and doomsday preppers, and a group of people who have seen what could happen with climate change and have separated themselves away from the world seemed right up my alley. While it was an interesting concept, I just wasn't able to fully engage in the book or really connect.

Marlo wasn't a character that I could find myself connecting to, in any way and that made the book a bit harder to really get into. It was also less action packed than I was expecting. I did enjoy that this was set in a scary future, but one that is so close to what we are experiencing every day and it is really not all that far off.

While I didn't love this book, I think it is an interesting look into a future that could be not that far off, and some of the people who are trying to separate themselves from what could be happening

When I read the synopsis of this book I'd imagined a whole other story than the one I got. It unfortunately did not meet the expectations I set when I started this novel. I was expecting more suspense, action, and twists and turns. However, what I got was a monotone story with unrelatable characters. I didn't like that almost the whole story was set on the self-sustaining Oregon ranch. I would've loved for the main character to grow and explore the outside world, because the world the author had created was pretty intriguing, and I would've loved to see it brought more to life on paper. What I got at the end of this book is what I would've loved to have happened in the middle of story. It had a very slow pace, and the main character wasn't that interesting to be honest. I couldn't connect to her and I didn't like her that much. She was in her mid-twenties but acted way younger. This book didn't feel finished, it ended when the story was starting to get good. This story felt more like a first book in a series, and if that was the case I would've definitely gave it an extra star.

DISASTER’S CHILDREN is an interesting look at preparing for the end of the world. It follows Marlo, a 25 year old woman who lives on a ranch co-founded by her millionaire parents as a way to rebuild society once “the Disaster” (climate change) brings on the apocalypse. Mario is conflicted about stayed on the ranch where she grew though, as there is no one else her age and she wants to get out and actually help the world get better rather than seclude herself on a very privileged way.

It is certainly a different take on cults and end of the world tropes seen a lot in literary fiction these days. It’s clear these rich people want to create a utopian society, but nothing truly bad ever ends up happening in the story and unfortunately, that’s what makes the book slightly boring. The story doesn’t really pick up until mid way through, but still left a lot to be desired. It’s a good read, but not one I can highly recommend.

Thank you to NetGalley and Little A Publishing for providing me with an ARC of Emma Sloley’s debut novel, Disaster’s Children. In exchange for the ARC I offer my unbiased review.

CliFi, dystopian and apocalyptic thrillers are a genre I’m slowly becoming more fascinated and comfortable with. I had high hopes for this novel, however within the first few pages I knew this book was not going to be a good fit for me. One of my bookish pet peeves is unnecessary, overflowing, descriptive passages that amount to nothing more than page fillers and that’s exactly what this book was. The characters were one dimensional, the plot was weak and the climax unsatisfying. I thought the premise showed promise unfortunately Sloley’s debut roots were evident. Pacing and dialogue were awkward and the book never delivered on the Climate front nor on the dystopian world building.

I am opting not to share this review on any public forums because I’m sure other readers might enjoy the writing and storytelling but it was simply not to my personal liking.

The concept, setting and most of the execution of this book were spot on, but I found Marlo the main character/narrator confusing and disagreeable. She is supposed to be in her 20s but come across like a 12 year old, which made it hard to process the story.

Disasters Children follows the sheltered life of main character Marlo on the elitist ranch she's grown up on. Marlo's choices throughout are questionable, she swung between clear headed and ridiculously girlish for a woman of her age and intelligence, in a way that made her seem like two separate personalities rather than one coherent character.

The ranch wasn't quite what I was expecting, I got the idea it would be a self sufficient, live off the earth style place. In actuality the residents have a quarter mil buy-in, they are all rich or previously rich folk who regularly visit the town and take swanky hotel trips. They claim not to be a doomsday cult but yet are apparently preparing for the climate change that will end civilisation. The world outside of the ranch is referred to as 'The Disaster'.

That premise is alarming in it's feasibility. The depictions of the outside world and how the human race are ignoring it's collapse chilled me. Yet a lot of the ranchers attribute this demise to wealth and greed whilst displaying those same flaws themselves. I found it hard to invest in their ideals for this reason, instead thinking them all hippocrates.

There are several side characters, I wont say who, that seemed to have their own story building but were suddenly chopped from the plot which I found disappointing.

At 50% into the book not much had happened. For those seeking character driven stories this may not be an issue, but for me it felt a little slow.
There are a few hooks that kept me reading at this point; What is in the mausoleum? Where has Wolf come from and why is he really here?

Unfortunately when I eventually got to the answers they weren't worth the build up. All in all I found the revelations to be anticlimactic and the ending not worth the time invested.

Marlo's adoptive parents, Maya and Carlton, co-founded The Ranch as a co-operative enclave for liberal 1%ers in the endtimes; 5-yrs old on arrival 20 years ago, lone denizen in her age-range since the dramatic departure of her childhood friends Alex and Ben who've forsaken the Ranch and their parents in order to rescue the outside world, aptly known as the Disaster. We don't really get to know other ranchers in depth, this story is Marlo's inner struggle as she matures and craves her own independence.

Actual stories in the news so vividly support Emma Sloley's vision of environmental, geo-political, and global breakdown and upheaval in Disaster's Children it is breathtaking. Cynical yet sweet, Marlo is understandably a very young 25, sometimes skipping and constantly referencing her parents. There is a running theme of Marlo doubting her own authenticity, she constantly worries she'll be perceived as trite, naive, a hayseed. I didn't find the character of Marlo's love interest Wolf to be as wholly convincing, but to be fair his backstory was so very convoluted it's no wonder. The suspenseful plot building was great, but the cliffhanger ending was a bit of a letdown - if Sloley produces a sequel, I'll come back and tack on another star here.

Expected a more faster paced book, but the author writes very detailed. Stoley carefully crafts a story that is well written. Wasn't immediately hooked, but appreciated the author's writing style! Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley.

I received this ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This is a new author to me and I enjoyed the book. It's a well-written dystopian novel around the effect of climate change with good character creation. There are a lot of personalities in this book. The sex scene was not necessary and random, but other than that, if Emma Sloley writes another book, I will definitely read it to see how she grows as an author.

I received a complimentary copy of this book through Netgalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
Marlo has been raised in a ranch commune, sheltered from the outside world, what they call the Disaster. This group, predicting how climate change would destroy the world, have created their own utopia, where only wealthy families are allowed in. Marlo's friends have left the commune to help avert disaster however they can and are urging Marlo to join them. She must decide between staying in the only life she's ever known or risking her own survival to help others.
This was a good book warning of the dangers of climate change. I like the description of the ranch, all these people working together to create a beautiful utopia. I can't blame Marlo's parents for doing everything they could to keep their only child safe and sheltered, but Wolf's reasons for staying seemed vague and a little creepy. My only complaint is that I wish the story had continued a little longer after they left the ranch.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you NetGalley.

I think the blurb gave me the wrong impression intially as I expected this to be much more... dystopian / apocalyptic than it was.
this is more of a "pre-apocalyptic" storyline before it all goes down.
As others have said, this is a pretty "realistic" look at what our Earth could look like in the future.

At first glance, I figured this book would be a much more apocolyptic than it was. I imagined the Disaster as a wasteland, but it was nothing like that. It was merely life as we have it now, with our impending climate distaster going on.

The beginning seemed to elude to much more; the dead eagles, and the reborn-Christian Simon. He wasn't even in the book after the beginning. Also the gun cave was never answered.

However I did like Marlo. In fact I loved her, and I loved Kenneth too. I was secretly holding out for them all the way through. He treated her with respect and dignity. I also really liked her growth in the book, from naivety to heading out to the world. Just perfect.

If I had one major complaint, well, I'm sorry, but it was Wolf. I never warmed to him, I knew he was up to something from the start. He was always disaparging, sulking like a child when he didn't get his way, and took an instant dislike to her friends (even after he admitted all at the end, he STILL disliked them! I had hoped he'd faked that too) and when he grabbed her crotch (even jokingly)... I dunno. All major red flags for an abusive relationship. Kenneth should have sorted him out early on in the book. I did enjoy the story overall, but I did expect more.

This is a brilliant pre-apocalyptic novel that depicts an unravelling world (the Disaster) and a scenario that our planet might succumb to in the not so distant future!

Set in a protected community that is ready to take on the end of the world, Disaster's Children provides a not too unrealistic glimpse into what our future on planet earth might look like. However, this is all done very subtly and in a clever way that makes it more of a contemporary novel of fiction rather than a sci-fi saga.

The ending definitely leaves you wanting more and dare I say a leaves room for a sequel..

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. This was my first time reading this author and I really enjoyed the book. It's a dystopian tale and I love stories based on what could happen to the world. She did a really good job with character creation and I'm hoping there will be more books to follow this one. There was an unnecessary sex scene that was just thrown in there ( it seemed) but other than that the book was good and I will read more by her.

Beautiful prose from a talented author, with well-defined characters, distinct and memorable! My Kindle is full of passages I highlighted for the insights, imagery, extraordinary ideas, and rich details. I love the way the world outside one microscosm of humanity, modeled in part after an ecovillage with "intentional communities" and committees voting on whether to allow new members in, but curiously isolated and insulated from the outside, even while taking advantage of forays to the outside for supplies, because the community is not entirely self-sustaining. The visionary founders have created a sort of Utopia, a beautiful place, sheltered from the rest of the world, which they refer to as The Disaster, which is darkly comic. And acrimonious.

The story unfolds gradually, vividly, (did I mention with rich detail? Lots and lots of rich detail?), and in spite of the lovely prose, I started skimming once I got to the middle. A somewhat creepy, controlling family friend and founding member, Kenneth, takes up a lot of Marlo's time and attention, but he offers her plenty of perks (access to inner-sanctum knowledge, e.g.). He's old enough to be her father but (again, kind creepily) enamored of her. She's old enough at age 25 to be sexually active, but she has to sneak around and lie about the one-night stands she occasionally scores out there in "The Disaster," and when nothing comes of these, one wonders why so many pages were devoted to a certain person I'll leave unnamed (no spoilers!).

It took the entire first one-third of the novel for the newcomer to arrive, Wolf, the mysterious young man who is roughly the only person around who's Marlo's age, so she is assigned the job of showing him around the place while he's being vetted as a potential member. He has a lot of stories from the outside ("The Disaster') to tell, and the Inside starts looking less like a paradise to Marlo the more he talks. Marlo's doting parents are more than a little controlling and overly protective of their adopted child. Marlo often thinks of the Chinese parents who had to give her up, which had me thinking this foreshadowed a plot twist, but maybe there's a Book Two coming. I hope so, because this story ends with a bit of a cliffhanger.

This isn't a spoiler because it's in the blurb: "Marlo has a choice: stay in the only home she’s ever known—or break away, taking its secrets of survival with her." For me, the secrets she would take with her are nothing we as readers could have anticipated. The air of mystery regarding these secrets seemed odd, given what they turned out to be. Maybe I've read too many other post-apocalyptic novels.

Marlo was hard for me to like, but I figured that was because she has quite a character arc to undergo. In the end, did she mature and become the heroic young woman I anticipated? Well, let's just say Marlo departs from the hero's journey that most readers have come to expect.

The novel feels a bit long to me, but I've been reading more short stories in the past few years and not as many novels, so I'm coming starting to prefer short and punchy tales, in spite of my lifelong love of things literary and leisurely.

There were parts of this book that I enjoyed and parts that I wanted to enjoy. But didn't. I enjoyed reading about the compound and the people and personalities that kept the place running. But that might just be the prepper in me. There were parts of the plot that I could have done without, for instance, the one-night stand...was it crucial to the plot? But, I'm sure the author had a plan. So little things kept me from enjoying the book more, but overall, it wasn't a bad read.

First, I received this book for free through Netgalley for a fair and honest review. I would rate this a 3.4/5. This book focuses around a young woman, Marlo, who lives in an isolated community. Marlo must come to terms with whether she can accept the reality of that community as remaining isolated increasingly means ignoring the plight of mankind. I was drawn to that concept from the blurb. I think this book got about two inches away from fulfilling its potential. Close enough that I felt it was okay, but I was left a little dissatisfied.
What was good: It's a good premise and the writing is smooth. You can tell the author takes time crafting her descriptions, and that effort pays off. I liked the struggle of the main character, and the questionability of the ethics/close-to-cultness of her isolated community. The author did a good job letting me pick up on subtle clues that showed the situation's complexity without roughly shoving me in either direction.
What could have been better: Nothing much happened, not that the reader is engaged with, that is. We are told that this is happening, this is happening, out in the "Disaster," but Marlo's arc felt painfully slow. Perhaps that's the point. I still believe that more could have happened with Marlo to engage the reader in the book's overarching themes. Also, early in the book there's a gun with a wooden barrel. I'm assuming it's meant to have a wooden stock, not a barrel.
Stuff I'm not sure about: The hard vilification of the big-ag industry and the glorification of the organic/non-gmo industries could have been a little less idealistic and instead more complex as it is in reality, but perhaps this is meant to display one way Marlo is still naive, in a mirror to the naive hypocrisy of her community. I won't spoil anything, but Marlo's goal at the very end is a little unrealistic in terms of plant genetics. It's not that it couldn't be realistic, but that bridge was never made. Marlo just makes this huge assumption that's not a good assumption. Again, this may have been written intentionally to craft the character. If so, I'm fine with it.
Overall, I think this was a good read for thoughtfulness. I like a book that asks questions, and this book does that. I just wish it had focused on those questions a little more and really delved into them through the narrative.

Fantastic writing and such an interesting story. This writer is fantastic and I cant wait to see what else comes our way from her. Excellent story line, plot and charecter development.

**I received an ARC ecopy of this book at no charge thanks to Netgalley in exchange for an honest opinion - my words are my OWN.

The writing was decent and the third star is for grammar and vocabulary, which was good. The problem was with the formatting (and hopefully the edited & finished version will correct this); the hyphen-split words at the end of a line were done weirdly and it distracted my eye. Like "slaughtered" at the end of a line of text was split as SLAUGHTE-RED and "however" was "HOWE-VER."
JUST NO.
There wasn't much actual "apocalypse" or dystopia, so that was disappointing - just hints and teases of "this" or "that" happening in the "real world". This was more a rich 1% commune for the Haves, who completely lacked self-awareness in their privileged lives and walled out the Have-Nots, which I found fairly distasteful in today's climate.
Most of the characters weren't very likable, and one of the main characters was in many completely naive, a poster child for arrested development, having been coddled and spoiled and rich and in the sheltered commune bubble, and also somehow Sex In The City worldly when she went to NYC with her father.
Her parents were emotionally manipulative and subtly controlling with "love."

There were many satellite characters brought forward, making you think they had some bearing on the story or importance...only to disappear and never be heard from again, except maybe a mention of the name 15 chapters later. There were dangling threads of storyline that were never picked up or tied off.
Basically I finished the book feeling vaguely unsatisfied, empty, with no sense of resolution or closure. I'm afraid I wouldn't recommend it as-is. I think the author is capable of better.