Leah
Written on Feb 9, 2015
Virginia Bergin’s debut novel The Rain (or H2O in America) was probably my favourite debut novel last year. It was EPIC. And it was unexpected. I was just getting in to more young adult novels, and more dystopian novels, and it surprised me how much I enjoyed it. (Except for the animal stuff because I will never, ever be able to read about animals dying or being left or just whatever, even if life is at stake and there’s killer rain abound.) So I was soooooo excited for book two, The Storm. Now, I think The Storm is the end, but we’ll see. If it is, it was a very fitting ending to Ruby’s story, and I’m certainly sad to not get more of her, because she’s just so infectious.
What hit me most about The Storm is it’s so fast-paced. The Rain was fast-paced, too, but The Storm kicked it up another notch. It’s frantic, Ruby’s always thinking, always got a constant stream going through her head and on to her pages, so it’s like she never stops. That pretty much set me on edge for the whole novel, because I wanted to read the book as fast as Ruby was putting her thoughts on paper. I wanted to devour it all in one go, and mostly I did. The Storm picks up just a short while after The Rain ends, and it surprises me as I sit and write this review how much I have to say, mostly because I’m still trying to process everything. There was just SO MUCH HAPPENING. SO MUCH STUFF. SO MUCH TERROR AND JOY AND HEARTBREAK. It’s so hard to put in to words anything that happened because EVERYTHING and NOTHING happened, if that makes sense. I mean, nothing didn’t happen, but it’s sort of all a blur. It’s almost as if I need to go back and re-read it and soak it all in.
I honestly can barely put down a decent review – I most certainly read this book WAY TOO fast. WAY WAY WAY too fast. But it was similar to the first book in that there’s Ruby by herself trying to figure out a way to survive; Ruby at the army camp (again); more of Darius Spratt (but not enough!!! I wanted more!!!!); more poor animals being sacrificed (sob); Princess is back (yay!); Ruby’s still searching for her dad. But it wasn’t like a re-run at all. It was just like it followed on perfectly from book one, and it’s just so crazy to think of a world like that, to think of an apocalypse occurring. It was crazy to think that Ruby is fifteen and having to strike out on her own and figure out how to save her own skin and find her dad and do all of this while avoiding the killer rain. She’s the strongest fifteen-year-old I’ve ever met, and she’s my bloody hero!
I feel like I can breath now I’ve finished the novel. I feel like for the past few hours I was reading the book I couldn’t breathe for fear of something going wrong, and every time it seemed like the book got to its ending point, something else happened and I’ve never feared so much for characters before. The book didn’t half pull at my heart-strings. Sob. I was welling up a lot. The Storm very much did as I expected, it was very much like I was reading in the middle of a storm and I feel like I’ve been punched over the head a few times by a boxer. (Not to mention how Ruby must feel.) Virginia Bergin is an astounding story-teller (if a very dizzying one, which is a compliment). I literally have no idea how she’s going to top The Rain or The Storm come her next novel, but I’ll be reading it for sure, if I can ever get over what is going to be a mammoth book hangover from The Storm.