WHEN IT RAINS Review

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I bought WHEN IT RAINS by KJ Ten Eyck at Barnes and Noble on impulse because I happened across the author during my husband, Sean and my’s (nearly weekly) trip to the store. I hadn’t read anything about, skimmed the back cover, or read the first page of the book like I usually do because I wanted to support the author. Unfortunately for me, it was terrible, and not in a good way.

Our story revolves around Stephanotis (called Steph by most of her friends) Weatherby, whose just left a bad relationship and lost her parents within a few months, yeah she’s that kinds of heroine; the broken woman with a horrible past who will inevitably find love and be completely fixed after he saves her several times . She also has a tiny, adorable Shetland sheepdog who will also save her during the course of the story. Anyways, our heroine gets a letter informing her that her long lost aunt left her a beautiful mansion that Steph will fix as her own damage is symbolically repaired. Later, she finds out that someone else wants the house for themselves and feels entitled to it because he believes that somehow Steph’s long-lost relative drove his grandpa to an early grave. Lucky for Steph though, there’s a will in the mansion that will prove that the mansion is hers-if she can find it. Before that happens though, some mysterious person threatens her and her friends-new and old alike, with continually escalating acts of violence.

On paper, this is an intriguing premise and I’m sure there are people out there who would love this kind of plot, the only problem is Eyck meanders around a lot, sometimes going several chapters without even mentioning the threats the heroine is getting. She also head hops between over a dozen characters, and not consistently either. The worst example of this entire head hopping issue was right after Steph barely escapes an exploding car, getting severely injured in the process. After she falls into a coma because of those injuries, the author hops between every single named character to show their reaction to the car bomb. If she focused on a few of her main characters this wouldn’t be as annoying, but the author hopped to minor characters as well and really weighed down the book in the process .

Another pacing issue Eyck had was throwing in a bunch of unnecessary subplots that would appear randomly and sometimes vanish unexpectedly. For example she set-up a love triangle at the beginning of the story between the lawyer helping her regain her claim on the house and the eventual hero of the story, Hank. This love triangle ended before I reached the halfway point of the story and is a symptom of a bigger problem, every single male character besides her lawyer’s dad and a married man named George lusted after Steph at some point, which can tip the heroine towards becoming a Mary-sue. I don’t think Steph got to that point, but it challenged my suspension of disbelief, especially since we don’t hear much about Steph’s physical appearance.

Another subplot that came straight out of the blue was when George randomly decided to go see an old friend of his father’s, a Veteran-named Chris. He gets to the friend’s home- a retirement community-type place and finds out that Chris is being horribly abused by the land lady. Chris does serve a purpose later, but he’s introduced in the third act of the story. At that point, Steph was still in a coma from the car bombing and the guy who attempted to kill her is still at large. Despite these much were pressing plot concerns, we spend an entire chapter showing how Chris settles in with the George, his wife and their baby. The way it was written felt like the author decided to pause the already convoluted plot in order to step on a soapbox and talk about one of her real life causes. Writing can be a good place for that, but not when your story is about something completely different.

Lastly, when she wasn’t pausing the book for subplots that went nowhere, she was underwriting potentially significant scenes that could have helped the pace some. An example of this was a scene towards the beginning when one of her friends suggested she go to a neighbor’s barbeque to get out of the house a little, one where Hank would be. What the author should have done is show the party so our hero and heroine can get to know each other a little better, what the author did was skip to the next day and simply have Steph reflect on the party: “She attended the holiday barbeque ,met George and Jenny’s family , and had a wonderful time” . With this approach including the party at all is irrelevant.

The characters aren’t much better than the plot. As mentioned before, Steph isn’t that compelling of a heroine and spends most of story reacting to things instead of being proactive. Not to mentions she spends a good chunk of the story sleeping beautied in a coma, right down to Hank kissing her while she’s unconscious (he doesn’t wake her up at that point, but his reactions with her have a direct impact on her coming out of the coma). I honestly think the kiss is sweet, but that’s because Hank is definitely a beta-hero who is incredibly sweet and hard-working with damage to match Steph’s. I kinda fell in love with him a little bit, mostly because I’m a sucker for a well-written beta-hero. However, he was the only character that I adored; the other characters ranged from passable sequel bait to pretty much pointless. The worst offenders of pointlessness were George and his wife, Jenny. Their subplots make up more than half the book, yet said subplots have little to do with the main story and drag the pacing down way too much. If some of their subplots had been cut, I think the plot would have flowed better.

The last thing I want to talk about is the setting. While most of the setting is a generic small town , the house itself is awesome. To say why though, I’m gonna have to get into spoilers, so fair warning if you want to continue reading.

As Steph and friends explore the house more and more secret passages and tunnels are discovered, which eventually proves that the house was once part of the Underground Railroad. It takes unveiling several of these secret passages and rooms before Steph finds the will that proves the house belongs to her. That aspect of discovery kept me reading the story past every line of stilted dialogue and unnecessary subplot. If the author just focused on the house, the threats (including the villain injuring and drugging her dog, so content warning for that), and our hero and heroine I think it could have been a much better story. Unfortunately, Eyck didn’t focus on those things, which is why I declare WHEN IT RAINS a bad book.