When the Rain Came by Matt Eicheldinger
Publications Date: March 17, 2026
Summary from NetGalley:
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 name: “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.
ARC provided by Andrews McMeel Publishing via Netgalley for an honest review.
Confession:
This is the first book in a new YA trilogy that has quite the interesting premise. Imagine it raining so much that it basically floods the whole world! Even for someone who lives in the Pacific Northwest, known for its rain, I had a hard time wrapping my head around so much water coming from the sky. But it wasn’t long before I was all in and totally hooked on this story of survival and found family.
The story is told through the eyes of Aurora. She is a survivor already, with having spent her whole life in foster care. She finally thinks she might have found her place with Jada and Nico, when the rain starts. Aurora really shines through in this story. She starts off a bit quiet and reserved, as you would expect with her history, but she soons shows herself as someone who will protect those who need it and also fight for herself and others. I really enjoyed her journey and watching her grow. She did read a bit on the younger side at the start of the story, but as she went on her journey her attitude and personality matured.
I really liked Jada and Nico, even if they were a bit on the rough side. Their prepper instincts were good, and they really did prepare Aurora as much as they could. I was disappointed when the disappeared on her, but I held out hope that there was more to it. I also really liked Kato, a young teen that Aurora rescues pretty early on. Their relationship quickly becomes a brother/sister dynamic and they work well together. Kato is also a survivor with really good instincts.
As you can imagine with this type of story there is a lot of action, and pretty much everyone is in nonstop survivor mode. The author does a great job of creating a hauntingly vivid world which you can easily picture happening. There are many dangers in this new world and not all of them are human. I don’t want to give too much away, but I did get the feeling that there was something otherworldly going on and not just the environmental disaster that was happening. I also liked the feeling of suspense about The Hill. Was this going to be somewhere safe or not?
This is a wonderful start to a much longer story. I hope that we get more answers in the next installment, which I am very much looking forward to reading. This is a wonderfully written story about found family, resilience and survival as well as self discovery. If you enjoy dystopian this is a series you don’t want to miss.
Confessions of a Serial Reader 
I tend to stay clear of YA but I do love a good dystopian novel so I think I’m definitely going to have to look out for this one. The premise sounds all too likely with all the rain we’ve had this year.
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Yes, the rain part is a bit frightening. I hope you get a chance to read it.
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