After the Red Rain by Barry Lyga, Peter Facinelli, Rob DeFranco

by:  Barry Lyga, Peter Facinelli, and Rob DeFranco
published by:  Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
publish date:  August 4, 2015

On the ruined planet Earth, where 50 billion people are confined to megacities and resources are scarce, Deedra has been handed a bleak and mundane existence by the Magistrate she works so hard for. But one day she comes across a beautiful boy named Rose struggling to cross the river--a boy with a secretive past and special abilities, who is somehow able to find comfort and life from their dying planet.

But just as the two form a bond, it is quickly torn apart after the Magistrate's son is murdered and Rose becomes the prime suspect. Little do Deedra and Rose know how much their relationship will affect the fate of everyone who lives on the planet.

I'm kind of struggling a little bit with this book.  There were some things that I liked about it, but my overall impression of it was that it was a little too weird for my taste.

First, I like Barry Lyga.  So, my assumption was that it was going to be really awesome.  Maybe it was those other two guys that made it weird, I don't know, but it didn't seem like Lyga's work.  Secondly, I liked the progression of Deedra and Rose's relationship.  There was no insta-love, there were no love triangles.  It was a nice, relatively normal relationship.  Throughout the book there was a lot of talk about how history changes depending on who writes it.  That's an important point that everyone should think about from time to time.  However, my overall feeling on this book was that I just kind of felt so-so about it.  I didn't care that much for Rose.  I didn't like what he was, it was kind of out there for me.

Would I recommend this book?  Maybe.  If it was someone that was really into the sci-fi genre and was more interested in DNA and combining DNA and the possibility of what could be done with it.  It just wasn't my cup of tea, but maybe it's someone else's.