I read The 5th Wave the year it came out and found it uneven but structurally interesting. When The Rains turned up in my queue as a comparison title, written by Gregg Hurwitz, a crime thriller author I had followed since the Orphan X series began, I was curious what he would do with the YA apocalyptic format. I started it on a Friday evening and was in deep enough by the third chapter that I finished it the following morning. Hurwitz knows how to write momentum, and in The Rains that skill is deployed without restraint.
The premise is efficient: a parasite infects everyone over eighteen, turning adults into something ferocious and inhuman. In the community of Creek's Cause, two brothers, teenager Chance Rain and his older brother Patrick, survive the first night and begin organizing the remaining children against the infected. Patrick's eighteenth birthday is days away, which means the story has a biological countdown built into its central relationship. That is smart genre construction, and Hurwitz uses it well.
Is The Rains Worth Your Time?
The comparison to Rick Yancey's The 5th Wave, offered on the cover, is accurate in terms of genre positioning but undersells how different the two books feel in execution. Where Yancey works with multiple perspectives and a more elaborately layered mystery about the alien threat, Hurwitz keeps everything tight and local. We see the apocalypse only through Chance's eyes, only from Creek's Cause, and only in the frantic days after the initial infection. That narrowness is a feature. The horror of watching trusted adults become something predatory is more effective at close range.
Todd Haberkorn narrates, and his performance is one of the reasons the format works. First-person YA apocalyptic fiction is notoriously difficult to sustain in audio because the narrator's voice has to carry both the action and the interiority without either drowning the other out. Haberkorn finds the register quickly and maintains it. One reviewer who criticized the heavy-handed first-person point of view in the print edition may find the audio version slightly more forgiving, since Haberkorn's pacing prevents the interiority from pooling.
The Best Parts of The Rains
What Hurwitz does well here, and what he does better than most thriller writers who cross into YA, is keep the horror grounded in character. The parasites are genuinely frightening, but the emotional engine of the book is the relationship between Chance and Patrick. Chance narrates as someone who knows his brother is running out of time and is trying to do something about it while also being terrified of the outcome. That urgency gives the survival sequences stakes beyond mere physical danger.
The violence is significant. One adult reviewer who listened to this warned that it pushed her limits even as someone who loves end-of-world fiction. That is useful information. The book is shelved as YA, but the content plays closer to horror, and parents or educators selecting this for younger listeners should read ahead. Hurwitz does not soften the violence in the way many YA publishers expect, and that commitment to realism is both a strength and a limiting factor for the book's intended audience.
Before You Commit to The Rains
The first-person narration that one reader found obstructive is a real stylistic choice that divides the audience. Chance has a voice that Hurwitz has clearly worked on, but it can feel self-conscious in places, particularly when the prose slows down in the middle of an action sequence to register Chance's emotional state. In audio this is less distracting than on the page, but listeners who prefer third-person distance from their genre fiction may find themselves adjusting.
The book's ending is designed to launch a series, and it does not resolve the central crisis of what the parasites are or where they come from. Listeners expecting a complete narrative arc will need to continue with Last Chance, the second book. The Rains functions better as an opening volume than as a self-contained story, which is worth knowing before the final chapter.
Should You Listen to The Rains?
The Rains is a good fit for adult listeners who enjoy apocalyptic fiction and do not require their horror packaged in adult-market format, and for older teenagers who can handle genuine violence without softening. If you are a Gregg Hurwitz fan curious about his work outside the Orphan X series, this is an interesting departure that demonstrates his genre range. Listeners who came in expecting something comparable to the lighter end of YA fantasy will find this considerably more intense than the classification might suggest.
If first-person present-tense narration frustrates you, or if you want a standalone story with a complete resolution, wait until the series is finished before committing. But for listeners ready for something tightly plotted and genuinely dark, the nine hours and fifty-five minutes move fast.
Key Details
- Performance: Todd Haberkorn brings urgency and youth to Chance's first-person voice without overselling the emotion, which suits the book's relentless forward pace.
- What it covers: Sibling loyalty under apocalyptic pressure, the horror of trusted adults becoming threats, parasitic invasion
- Feel: Tense and brutal, closer to horror than the YA label suggests
- Our call: A propulsive YA thriller with genuine violence that earns its intensity, though the first-person narration is an acquired taste.
