When the Rain Came

Author: Matthew Eicheldinger

Adventure stories (Children's / Teenage) | Science fiction (Children's / Teenage)

Published on 23^rd April 2026 by Andrews McMeel Publishing in the United States as part of the 'When the Rain Came' series.

Paperback / softback | 320 pages
202mm x 141mm x 22mm | 474g

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.

A #8 Publishers Weekly Bestseller! “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.

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.