Rating: 4 stars

The rain never stops. The world is drowning. Survival is everything. When the Rain Came is the first YA book in an all-new, action-packed dystopian adventure series by New York Times bestselling author Matt Eicheldinger.

“If we stay here, if we keep wandering without a real plan, we won’t last. Maybe The Hill is dangerous. But maybe it’s not. It’s the only plan we have.”

Seventeen-year-old Aurora knows how to survive. Life in the foster system has taught her how to stay quiet, stay smart, and stay ready. But nothing could prepare her for this: a never-ending storm that swallows cities, drowns forests, and turns the world into a flooded wasteland.

Trapped in a collapsing house with her strict prepper foster parents, Aurora is forced to live by their rules just to stay alive. Until the day they disappear without a trace.

Alone. Abandoned. And running out of time.

All Aurora has is a waterlogged scrap of paper and a “The Hill.”

With looters closing in and the floodwaters rising higher each day, she’s left with one impossible choice—stay and wait for the storm to take her, or risk everything on a journey through the drowned remains of the world, to a find a place that may or not exist.

It’s forward or nothing.

With echoes of Life As We Knew It, The Last of Us, and Hatchet, Aurora’s story is a gripping, emotionally resonant survival story about resilience, found family, and one girl’s fight to reclaim her future in a drowning world.

I received a digital copy of this book through the publisher on NetGalley for an honest review.

When the Rain Came was an action-packed, gripping read that had me on the edge of my seat, wondering what was going to happen next. A story from the perspective of a character that you couldn’t help but feel empathetic towards, as she’s someone who’s never had anyone that she saw as family. Then, when she finally gets people in her life that she might actually see in that way, things in her life go haywire, and then they abandon her to the elements, and she has to learn to survive in a drowning world.

And I enjoyed every minute reading this gripping story, wondering where Aurora was going to end up next. I felt like this was a wonderful read because it had you on the edge with every chapter, and I felt like I could imagine the world Aurora was living in as she was doing everything she could to survive. It was truly an apocalyptic story, which was what I enjoyed about it, as you saw what these characters had to do to survive this world.

What I also enjoyed about When the Rain Came was seeing the story told from Aurora’s perspective. I found her character very enjoyable in this story because even with what was going on, she kept moving forward. She didn’t give up even when things were very grim for her. She kept fighting even when things were really bad. I also enjoyed the mystery surrounding the Hill in the story here, too, and not truly knowing if this place is somewhere the characters really want to go or not. I am also interested in finding out in the next book what’s going to happen to Aurora and the rest of the characters. Overall, I enjoyed reading this book and recommend it to everyone who loves young adult dystopian fiction. When the Rain Came is scheduled to be published on March 17, 2026, for those interested in reading this book.