Book Review: The Boy Who Loved Rain by Gerard Kelly

The Boy Who Loved Rain by Gerard Kelly
Release Date: 21st November 2014
Publisher: Lion Fiction
Buy: Paperback | Kindle
Rating:

Colom had the perfect childhood – the much-loved only child of a highly respected church pastor and parenting mentor. Yet he wakes screaming from recurring dreams in which his sister is drowning and he can’t save her.

Gradually Colom withdraws from his family and friends – sullen and non-communicative one moment, angry and lashing out the next. Desperate to help their son, his mother Fiona turns to her husband for support. But David will not accept that outside help is needed.

Then a close school friend of Colom’s hangs himself. And they find Colom’s own suicide pledge, hidden neatly away in his room.

In panic, Fiona takes Colom and flees, turning to Miriam, an old friend, for guidance and seeking refuge with her in France. But Miriam has secrets of her own. What revelations will come to light under the blue skies of Portivy –and will they come in time to save Colom from self-destruction?

The Boy Who Loved Rain centres around families, secrets and the ways in which the unknown can effect us.
We firstly meet Colom, who although has seemingly had the perfect childhood, is suffering deeply during his teenage years.
He keeps having horrific dreams that his sister is drowning and he is unable to save her; which is odd in itself as he doesn’t have a sister.
Colom becomes more and more withdrawn, barely leaving his room, getting into difficulty at school and starts to believe that suicide is his only option. His mother, Fiona, is distraught and desperately wants Colom to receive specialist help, however his father, David, who is a pastor of an extremely high profile church in London, refuses outright. He believes that any help Colom receives should come from within the church.
The situation worsens when Fiona finds her son’s own suicide pledge and she decides to take immediate action. She reconnects with one of her old friends, Miriam, who she believes can help Colom. With no backward glance Fiona takes Colom to France with Miriam in an attempt save Colom from himself before it’s too late…

The Boy Who Loved Rain is one extremely gripping, hard hitting, page turner of a novel. As soon as I started reading this novel I knew that I was going to enjoy it, immediately getting immersed within the lives of these seemingly ‘normal’ characters as they go through such turbulent times.
This is such a highly charged story and I found it to be a really emotional read. Not only will your heart break for Colom in an attempt to understand what he’s going through but also for his mother. Can you imagine finding out that your son has made a pledge to kill himself and there’s nothing that you can do? Fiona’s struggle was documented so realistically and you can’t help but imagine how helpless she must have felt. Gerard Kelly not only does a brilliant job at evoking emotion within this story but he is also fantastic at his characterisation. The characters in this novel are brought to life with such feeling that you can’t help but get emotionally involved with them yourself, which goes for Colom, Fiona and Miriam. You’ll be desperately hoping that the characters get the ending that they deserve.
I had quite high expectations for The Boy Who Loved Rain as it sounded very much like a Jodi Picoult novel (which is a very, very, VERY good thing) and it didn’t disappoint, plus it definitely did have remnants of the kind of stories that Jodi Picoult writes. There was that issue of asking yourself what you would do if you were in the characters situation and I always find that makes for a thought provoking read, and it certainly did in this case.
I also really liked how there were rain related quotes and definitions at the start of each chapter. I was desperate to find out how rain applies to the goings on in the story and felt that this made it that extra bit mysterious, causing me to want to read on and on in order to find out.
The blurb on the front of the book “They say that what you don’t know can’t hurt you. They’re wrong” sums up this novel perfectly. It fits this novel so well and once you’ve read it you’ll completely understand.
The Boy Who Loved Rain examines the effect that secrets can have on a whole family and makes for a gripping, emotional and highly unusual read. I’m immensely looking forward to more from Gerard Kelly after enjoying this novel so much.

I would like to say a massive thank you to publishers, Lion Hudson for providing me with a copy of The Boy Who Loved Rain to read and review. My thanks also to Rhoda for inviting me to be a part of the blog tour accompanying the book. ♥

Gerard Kelly is a writer, preacher-poet, Mac lover and coffee drinker. He and his wife Chrissie have lived and worked in the UK, France and the Netherlands, and are popular speakers at conferences in Europe. In 1995, they founded Cafe-net, the European missions project that became The Bless Network in 2004. They currently live in Basse Normandy, France.