Rainfall Tour Stop! ~ Crystal's Many Reviewers

Paige’s father has Alzheimers, and her fiancé is shot and killed in an armed robbery. Paige fights her depression and pulls herself out of the dark place that she has succumbed to, with monumental effort and a new-found determination to live her life to the fullest, doing things that both terrify and exhilarate her.

When Paige meets Adam, the attraction is instantaneous. Adam grew up in an orphanage and has no recollection of his life before the age of six. Paige falls head over heels in love and embraces a happiness she never dreamed possible. Until the day she finds Adam in bed with another woman.

Wanting nothing more to do with him, Paige cuts Adam out of her life, until she receives a mysterious visitor, who reveals secrets about Adam's past that shock Paige to her very core.

Determined to fight for the man that she loves, Paige finds herself on a journey that will change her life forever.

I really struggled with how to rate this book. I was left uncomfortable most of the time, I was finding myself all over the map with emotions but the bottom line that convinced me to give it a four was the pure guts and brilliance of this author. She took the topic of DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) and made it not only understandable to the reader, but created a story that could help the reader empathize with Adam and Paige.

I can’t give you more details because if you don’t know what DID is, I won’t be able to explain it in this review and if you do understand that disorder, you will be able to predict the story by my slight description. I will say that Paige is a very positive and strong female character who I found myself admiring through the book. She has faced many challenges in her life, her parents’ divorce; her mother’s marrying Frank. Her father has Alzheimer’s and she fell in love with a man and was planning on marrying him until one fateful night he was killed. Still with all of this she never became bitter, she enjoyed playing in the rain and being happy. Her life revolved around taking risk and living, not hiding in the shadow of pain and depression. Then the event that will show her what she is really made of happen, she met Adam.

Adam comes from a background of the unknown. Not remembering his life before being in an orphanage he tries to find the good in people and in life. He falls for Paige as quickly as she falls for him and they begin to plan a life with each other until things starts happening. This is where Paige’s courage and faith in Adam and his determination to do what it will take to get better begins. We are introduced to new characters and the story starts to unravel. In the midst of trying to understand all of the information we begin to start saying goodbye.

I have never read a book like this before and I found it broke my heart in so many places because I knew things needed to be done yet I wasn’t sure if I would be willing to take those steps as these two did. I can promise you this isn’t a light hearted and easy read. It will grip your heart and twist it in so many directions. I am left with an appreciation that I had the chance to read it, but some of the scenes will haunt me for a while. The author did a fabulous job at sucking the reader and their emotions into the story and making what seems fiction real. I applaud her for her work and for this story and would recommend it to anyone who is into psychological suspense with a twist of human nature and love.

I slump down at the kitchen table and, after a moment’s hesitation, he joins me.

“He looked exactly like you,” I utter, too exhausted to even have this conversation.

“He wasn’t me,” he iterates, his hand covering mine on the table.

I look up at him, his curly black hair and his white V-neck T-shirt which emphasises his tanned skin. His blue eyes are pleading. He is sincere, I realise. He has no idea what I am talking about. How can this be possible? I rise from my chair.

“I need to get some sleep,” I mutter, heading toward the bedroom. “Are you coming?” I ask, looking back at him and he sighs in relief and follows me. I lie down on the bed and he lies beside me, curling his body around mine and stroking my hair until I fall into a dreamless sleep.

Two weeks go by and the party planning is in full swing. My mother has worked herself up into a frenzy, so determined is she to upstage Kimberley, Frank’s first wife, who managed to get both Sammy and Lola’s weddings in the society pages. My mother seeks retribution. The party, now only a week away, is escalating into epic proportions, and to my utter dismay, Adam is in on it. He keeps phoning her to check that the cake is three-tiered, that the napkins are ordered, that the string-quartet are well rehearsed. Yesterday I caught them both behind the pool-house smoking. I gave them a ten minute lecture, both looking suitably sheepish and then I laughed my head off. Mom is determined that we enjoy the last of the good summer weather, which is laughable, as the party is only a week before the change of season and there is a chill in the air, already.

On the Thursday before the party I drop by Adam’s apartment to fetch his suit. He had asked me to take it to the dry-cleaners for him ages ago and I had forgotten all about it. Now, with the engagement party only a few days away I realise I am almost out of time. Luckily I called Mr Cullen down at Dry-It and he promised he would prioritise the suit and have it ready for Saturday, for a small fee, of course.

I am thinking fondly of how Adam would probably freak out if he knew that I had overlooked such an important detail and how he would probably have a fit if he knew that I still didn’t have shoes to go with my dress. I am so deep in thought that I walk right into his room and open his cupboard before I even register that anyone else is in the room.

Everything seems to move in slow motion. Hearing a noise, I turn and catch them at it. Her skin is so white against Adam’s that they look like an interracial couple. She is straddling him, her red high heels still on. Her boobs are bigger than mine and she has on far too much fake jewellery. I drop my bag, open my mouth and scream. It is the same blonde girl, of that I am certain. I meet Adam’s glare and am shocked by his face, so contorted with rage that I barely recognise him. He opens his mouth and starts yelling, calling me names that I never knew he was capable of speaking. Adam doesn’t curse. This Adam, however, swears at me so badly that my cheeks flame and bile rises in my throat.

Eventually I can take no more and I turn and run from the house. I don’t stop running for over a month, moving from friends to various family members’ houses and avoiding all Adam’s calls, until one day they just stop coming. After a week of absolutely no contact I finally feel brave enough to venture home. Adam is gone although most of his clothes are still there. I call a locksmith immediately and have all the locks changed, which turns out to be completely unnecessary because he doesn’t come back.

Wife, mother of 3, businesswoman by day and writer by night, Melissa is the author of The Legacy and The Legion (books 1 and 2 of The Legacy Trilogy), and she is currently writing the final installment of the trilogy, The Legend.

Melissa is also the self-published author of the stand-alone novels Rainfall and The Traveler (available on Amazon). An avid reader herself, Melissa finally decided to stop ‘watching from the sidelines’ and to do what is her passion. “I was driving home from work when inspiration struck, and a storyline started unravelling in my head. For a few days, it was all I could think about and eventually I realised that the only way to get it out of my head, was to put it all down on paper. I started writing, and that was that.” She lives with her husband and three children in Hillcrest, South Africa.