BOOK REVIEW: The Storm (The Rain #2) by Virginia Bergin

I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

“I’ll tell you a weird thing about apocalypses, a thing I didn’t even know until I was in one. They seem pretty bad, don’t they? Well, take it from me . . . They can always get worse.”

Do you know what I hate about NetGalley? I hate that they don’t always tell you when a book is part of a series. I actually didn’t realize this one was a sequel until I was a chapter in. By that time, it was too late. I was addicted to the story that quickly.

I was able to get the basics: there is some kind of illness in the rain that can kill you immediately. Does it seem realistic? No. But it made for a great story and sometimes that is all that matters. Ruby Morris is alone at her house and is waiting for her dad. Her mom and stepbrother are dead and her dad left her to get her grandmother but he hasn’t come back. So now Ruby is trying her best to survive.

One of the things I loved most about this book was the narrative. It was written entirely in first person, almost like a letter to her mother, and this allowed me to connect more with her. Sometimes it was almost like a stream of consciousness thing. She thought about typical survival stuff. She broke into the library to read everything she could find about survival and car maintenance. She got really good at hotwiring cars in a heartbeat. But she also thought about things like how she smelled and how her hair looked. She was worried about running out of shampoo so she just shaved her head so she wouldn’t have to worry about it. She was kind of a bad ass and I loved it. She was funny and sarcastic and hated anyone telling her what she should be doing (because, you know, she was the expert).

Things got a little confusing at times. Because it was a first person narrative and because things were so out of control, her thoughts were a jumble more often than not. She meets some fellow teenagers and kids and she tries to hide out until things get crazy. Now because I didn’t read the first book, I missed a little. But basically, there is an army base and several of her friends abandoned her to go to this base. The reason the soldiers didn’t pick her was because she was deemed useless. Umm . . . okay. I am not sure the army’s definition of useless, but it didn’t seem to fit Ruby. But yeah, then Ruby realizes the army is using people as lab rats to find a cure for the disease and the army realizes Ruby isn’t as useless as they thought. Then there is a boy that I guess she spent time with., Darius Spratt, and I guess they loved each other or something. This was hard to tell at times because they only ran into each other by chance two or three times throughout the whole book. I didn’t see any chemistry. Regardless, I am just really glad that the romance thing took a backseat. It was just Ruby trying to survive, trying to find her family, oh and taking care of a small child she kind of adopted, Princess. Princess was the one bright spot of humanity left for Ruby. She allowed Ruby to show her softer side, even while Ruby was trying to stay strong and tough.

I think that the book was super fast paced and sometimes it seemed like too much was happening at once. But it kind of fell apart a little with the ending. It seems as if there won’t be a sequel, so things were wrapped up. But they were wrapped up in a neat little bow and I am still not how they fixed everything or even if the way they fixed things was realistic at all. Then again, a killer disease that you get from touching rain is pretty unrealistic to begin with.

Buy/Borrow/Skip: So even though I didn't read the first one, I still think this is a book worth buying. I have read reviews of the first one and there was a huge consensus that Ruby was very annoying. According to the reviews of this one, she was not nearly as bad. Since I know what happens, I may just skip reading the first one.