A leisurely, meandering story of a wealthy 25-year old living on her parents' communal ranch, where they and their equally rich neighbors plan for a self-sustaining future during the coming ecological crises. They call the outside "The Disaster" and barely acknowledge their own complicity in the state of the world. The ranch requires a steep financial investment and hard physical work from all, but because of the group's wealth they lack for nothing and buy what they need if they can't produce it themselves. Most of them stay off the Internet, relying on news synopses prepared by one volunteer. There are lovely picnics near one of their private lakes and long evenings drinking expensive wine in the clubhouse (they call it the Commons). Every now and then someone goes off to try to recruit more people of their status to join the ranch.

Marlo lives in her own home on the ranch, which she loves (they moved here when she was 5), but she wonders about staying for a while in the outside world and if she should follow her two best friends there to try to fix the world from within it. Before she can actually leave, a stranger shows up, she falls for him, and they decide to plan a future at the ranch. A surprise revelation makes her doubt her choice, and the book ends with her betraying those closest to her in the most unforgivable manner.

Marlo is not particularly likable and operates more like a teenager than a well-educated and sexually-mature woman. For most of the book I tended to dislike the ranchers, who have all they want materially but feel that somehow they're helping ensure the survival of civilization. But what Marlo does at the end of the book is so awful it makes the ranchers into victims, and her actions make little sense for a character who tends to think things through ad nauseam. The author, however, ends the book in a celebratory mood, with Marlo triumphant and her parents and other ranchers, including a close friend of hers, with a crushing surprise ahead of them.

All in all, the book is distasteful in its tone deafness and left a sour aftertaste.

Books like this are the reason fans fell in love with post-apoplectic styled novels. The realistic possibilities against a damaged landscape and just as damaged world of men where all are equals. After all, when the end comes, aren’t we all survivalists? When we open a book, we expect to be entertained - and oh how Disaster’s Children carries that special story reaching into your imagination from the start while leading you to the unknown conclusion. This one really delivers what Science Fiction and Fantasy lovers want.

Thank you to the publisher for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest opinion.

Climate change has been something I've been trying to keep in mind in my daily life and to take action accordingly where I can, but it's not something I've really seen in fiction before, hence why I requested this book.

Marlo (I assume her name is a portmanteau of both her parents' names) has grown up on an exclusive commune-type community for the wealthy hoping to survive when the effects of climate change strike. The book follows her development as she struggles with wanting to leave, alongside her loyalty to the ranch and her family.

Sloley goes to great lengths to try to make us see Marlo as distinct from the other ranchers, trying to show her as open minded about the outside world ('the Disaster') but there is only so far that is believable to me given her age and the privileged lifestyle she has enjoyed.

Ultimately, and unexpectedly, this is really a love story, although I guessed the twist in this part of the story quite quickly. The tension and crisis point in the relationship didn't seem particularly big to me either.

Although not much really seemed to happen, I did enjoy reading this book. I think more for the climate change aspects (although I did find some of the ranchers' decisions on how to order their lives quite weird - I was surprised they weren't more eco-friendly in some of their practises and wanted to ask Marlo why she hadn't heard of menstrual cups when she was worrying about running out of tampons!). In a way it was kind of disappointing to not see how the climate crisis played out in Sloley's imagined future. Sadly, according to many scientists, climate disaster will strike us much sooner than in this book unless action is taken by governments, businesses, and individuals alike.