I found this somewhat-battered softcover in this Little Free Library in Portsmouth NH while dropping off some books of my own, along with its sequel The Storm. It's a YA novel about a water-borne apocalypse, also published as Rain.

I liked the premise - an asteroid that's threatening Earth is exploded before it strikes, saving the planet, but some years later it seems that the fragments have carried a dangerous lifeform into the atmosphere. As the story begins, teenaged Ruby has enjoyed her first kiss with a charming schoolmate at a party at a friend's house - and then it starts to rain... She and some of the others are under shelter, but they soon find that anyone touched by the rain suffers a painful and horrifying death.

From there the story's a more or less typical survive-the-apocalypse tale, but having rainfall as the vector puts an immediate and unnerving spin on things. While Ruby as a narrator isn't entirely sympathetic - yes, she's in a horrible situation, but she tends to be self-centered and whiny - her situation is increasingly awful, and she does manage to cope better than many would (probably including me). Whether she'll be able to find others, locate her absentee father, or merely survive makes up the rest of the book (though the existence of a sequel suggests the answer to that last one!).

Guidelines for safely visiting and stocking Little Free Libraries during the COVID-19 pandemic, from the LFL site here.

I left this book and its prequel in this Little Free Library on this bright but chilly and windy day; hope someone enjoys it!

[See other recent releases in MA here.]

*** Released for the 2020 e-less challenge. ***