Etiquette for an Apocalypse by Anne Mendel

From Amazon - It’s the 2020 Apocalypse and Sophie Cohen must keep her family alive amid the grueling, sometimes strangely amusing, realities of starvation and violence. In all of this chaos, can she mobilize her community to find a serial killer and take on the sinister emerging power structure? Can she learn to use a pizza box/aluminum foil solar oven and a Glock 9mm? Can she resolve interminable high-drama clashes with her mother, daughter and husband? She might find that life--without her Prius, iPhone and chocolate éclairs—isn’t the end-of-the-world.

Etiquette for an Apocalypse is a dark comedy that kept me riveted from beginning to end.  Sophie and her family live on the eleventh floor in her building and it's pretty safe there.  With no electricity, the elevator doesn't work and by the ninth floor, thieves are worn out from climbing any higher.

Her husband works at the hospital, her daughter spends her time reading, her mother has Alzheimer's and is always trying to perfect her new lithe figure and look, and Sophie spends her time trying to keep them all fed and pressing pills - how she trades for what they need.

When Bertrand, Sophie's husband, comes home from work one day disturbed about the dead prostitutes who keep showing up with their hearts carved out, Sophie doesn't want to become involved.  But Bert insists and she soon finds herself investigating a serial killer.  She's already lost a son and she sure doesn't want to see her daughter end up in that life and then dead.

With wry and dark humor, candid moments, Etiquette for an Apocalypse is a shining star in today's dystopian fiction.  It's twisted and stark, and really had me appreciating what I take for granted.  The characters are unique, yet completely relat-able. I can't wait to see what Mendel writes about next! 

*I received this book in exchange for an honest review.