Book Review: Praying for Rain by B.B. Easton

Title: Praying for Rain

Author: B.B. Easton
Release Date: April 11, 2019
Pages: 224
Format: eBook
Age Group: Adult
Genre: Dystopian Romance

      

With only three days left until the predicted apocalypse, the small town of Franklin Springs, Georgia, has become a wasteland of abandoned cars, abandoned homes, abandoned businesses, and abandoned people. People like Rainbow Williams. Rain isn’t afraid of dying. In fact, she’s looking forward to it. If she can just outrun her pain until April 23, she’ll never have to feel it at all. Wes Parker has survived every horrible thing this life has thrown at him with nothing more than his resourcefulness and disarming good looks. Why should the end of the world be any different? All he needs are some basic supplies, shelter, and a sucker willing to help him out, which is exactly what he finds when he returns to his hometown of Franklin Springs. As society crumbles, dangers mount, and secrets refuse to stay buried, two lost souls are thrust together in a twist of fate—one who will do anything to survive and one who can’t wait to die. Perhaps, together, they can learn how to live. Before their time runs out.

If you're an avid reader, and if you're reading this blog it's a big chance you are, once in a while, you get lucky and become so pleasurably surprised by a book, that you can't stop thinking about it, even weeks later. I'm here to tell you, friends, that Praying for Rain was that book for me this year. And I recommend it to everyone who will listen.

One thing I have learned about myself that I live for stories that have great characterization in the middle of some chaotic world event. Not only was the "event" believable, but so were the characters. And everything is a slow build as little clues each build slowly, patiently, with such an amazing story and I cannot wait to read the continuation. Because yes, although it doesn't end in a cliffhanger per se, there's more left to tell in the way that it ends. And the next book is just going to build on characters hinted about in this story. Honestly, I can't wait.

Rain is such a complex character. I don't think this story would have worked otherwise. From the beginning, you can sense that there's something not quite right about her and this goes mostly unexplored until she encounters Wes - and he's got his own agenda, one that Rain doesn't mind going along with, because really, what's left for her? Well, we really don't find out until close to the end. This book is an amazing exploration into what people do to survive, how people cope with mental health illness, and everything in between. It's probably one of my favorite things about this book: it both comments on society at large but also takes a magnifying glass and holds it right up to us, exposing what makes us as people tick and what holds us together (hell, and what makes us break down).

I LOVED this book. There's just nothing else to add. And because it's a little on the shorter side, it didn't take me long to finish, which I did in one sitting since once I started, I couldn't stop. 

If you're even a bit curious, I beg you - pick this book up! 

Trigger Warnings: rape, death, depression, and a multitude of other subjects that are messed up and comes with the gloom and horror that comes from the darkness of humanity. Stay away if any of these things are hard for you.