Genre 📚: YA Speculative Fiction, Coming-of-age, Romance
Tropes 💁♀️: Empathetic environment, Family drama, Grumpy x Sunshine
Rep ✔️: Bangladeshi American main character, Turkish American love interest, queer side character
CW ⚠️: Depression, suicidal ideation, anxiety, panic attacks, emotional (and some physical) abuse
Rating ⭐️: 4.5/5
Tashie Bhuiyan is quickly becoming one of my favorite YA authors. After Stay With My Heart, I’ll Pretend You’re Mind, and now Right as Rain, I’m convinced that I’ll love whatever the heck she writes. And I’ll love her beautifully complicated characters. This book follows FMC Megh, a recent high school grad who is desperate to leave her emotionally abusive parents behind and start anew in California. Her depression is overwhelming, and it soon manifests into a literal storm… She’s struck by lightning, and she wakes up to find a cloud above her head. A cloud that rains depending on her emotions.
Soooo, that’s inconvenient. It’s actually quite disastrous since her emotions cause a heavy rain over the entire city, affecting everyone else. Luckily for her, she meets a cute, sunshiney boy at her internship — who just happens to be a meteorology student. They work together to figure out her predicament, to figure out how to ease her sadness, and they end up catching feelings in the process. Megh and Lev have a very sweet connection, and though Megh thought it impossible, they are able to have pockets of joy. Only pockets, though, because… Well, love doesn’t solve everything. As much as we want it to.
Reading this book was tough at times, as Megh’s dark thoughts reignited my own thoughts and experiences with depression. But as tough as it was, it was also very real and raw and, most importantly, validating. I always appreciate Tashie’s themes with mental health and the way they’re a separate being from the romance. That being said, her romantic storylines are also flippin’ fantastic. They’re tender, they’re electric, and they just leave me feeling good. Even throughout the tears, the fights, the dramatic rain scenes, there’s still that feeling of hope.
**Much thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Right as Rain will be released on March 10, 2026.
Sara Bechtol 