Review: Need by Carrie Jones

Need by Carrie Jones

Need #1

Zara collects phobias the way other high school girls collect lipsticks. Little wonder, since life’s been pretty rough so far. Her father left, her stepfather just died, and her mother’s pretty much checked out. Now Zara’s living with her grandmother in sleepy, cold Maine so that she stays “safe.” Zara doesn’t think she’s in danger; she thinks her mother can’t deal.

Wrong. Turns out that guy she sees everywhere, the one leaving trails of gold glitter, isn’t a figment of her imagination. He’s a pixie—and not the cute, lovable kind with wings. He’s the kind who has dreadful, uncontrollable needs. And he’s trailing Zara.

With suspense, romance, and paranormal themes, this exciting breakout novel has all the elements to keep teens rapidly turning the pages.

When her father died, it left Zara nearly dead inside. In a last ditch effort to "wake" her up, Zara's mother sends her to live with her Gram in Alaska. She quickly gets wrapped up in a mess that has been going on for years. Boys are going missing and it's happened before. Meanwhile a mysterious man keeps following her and soon starts trying to draw her out. It seems like he would stop at nothing to get her. The more she digs, the more secrets she uncovers, and she unravels something about her past that is absolutely shocking. In order to survive she must quickly swallow her fears and face them or someone else may just pay the price.

The love interest, Nick, is a very uncommon character. In most books the guy is very "experienced" and the girl usually isn't. In this book however, both of the characters are pretty "pure." Nick hasn't ever even kissed a girl. I found this to be a refreshing change of pace. It makes their relationship so much sweeter. I also love his flaws as they make him all the more endearing. Zara's main flaw on the other hand are not quite so endearing. She tends to over emphasize her desire to stop the world's atrocities that she completely forgets about the here and now. However, when you put that aside, she is a pretty interesting character that is very selfless.

This books was extremely fast paced, to the point where at times I felt like I was missing something. The book just seemed to be so condensed that it actually skipped over a lot of the build up. One example would be the almost instant friendship between Zara, Issie, and Devyn. I would have liked to have seen more of the beginnings of the friendship to make it just a little more realistic. I just didn't really feel everything was established between them well enough so I had a hard time feeling a connection between them.

All in all I found this to be a pretty good book. The pacing was very quick and it was incredibly hard to put down. The resolution at the end was a temporary one at best, and promises for a very interesting continuation of the series. I look forward to digging deeper into the world of pixies and weres and the parts these great character play in it.

Rating:

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Need