Rain Dragon by Jon Raymond (pub date 4/24/12)

“Now that my former life was so definitively behind me, I could see it for all its wonderful comfort and ease.”

Rain Dragon is a short novel about what happens when people get what they are searching for and still find themselves wanting more. 

Damon and his longtime girlfriend Amy are young adults looking for a change from the grind of their daily lives.  They decide to say goodbye to their jobs, their commutes, and their comforts in Los Angeles and join a commune of organic farmers.  Amy seems to find her place in the community pretty quickly, while Damon struggles to fit in and has a difficult time letting go of his former life in Los Angeles.  This disparity quickly puts a strain on their relationship.  But soon enough, Damon’s luck changes when he is asked to take control of the farm’s marketing and branding efforts. 

I’m still not really sure what to make of this book.  It had a very promising and interesting premise, but I started losing interest about a third of the way through.  The characters are underdeveloped, and the rest of the story was pretty weak.  I found it pretty unclear what the true point of the story really was.  Damon was a likeable enough character, but the author didn’t flesh him out enough to make him interesting.

Indie books can be really amazing, but in this case there just wasn’t enough to really hold my interest.