* New York Times Bestseller
* New York Times Bestselling Author
The Gist:
Zara hasn’t been the same since her step-dad died right in front of her. She’s empty and cold and numb. After months of watching her daughter fade, Zara’s mother decides that she needs a change of venue. So Zara is forced to leave her home in Charlestown and go to live with her step-grandmother in a tiny, remote town in Maine. And to top it all off, someone’s stalking her. Ever since her dad died Zara’s noticed a strange man following her around, pointing at her from a distance. Zara takes being sent to Maine as an exile. The only upside: she’ll be far away from her weird psycho-stalker. But when she gets to the frozen town she feels far from safe. And at school the very next day she find out why. At lunch – out of nowhere – her stalker shows up, pointing at her from the woods outside the school. Zara’s new friends are determined to help her with her mysterious stalker troubles. Issie - Zara’s always-hyper best friend – and Devyn – a wheelchair bound genius – do some research and come up with something that sounds completely crazy: Zara’s stalker is a pixie.
What We Think
What We Think
Reviewed by Dream Catcher
Number of Pages: 306
So I have a stack of books to-read in my room I fondly (and uncreatively) call the Bookstack. This book was fourth from the bottom because I kept putting it off. Every time I’d finish a book I’d say to myself I should read Need. But then I’d put it back at the bottom of the pile. So finally I got up the guts and decided to read it, once and for all. Why did I stall? I have no idea. No one had told me the book was bad, and I really had no reason to believe it wouldn’t be a good read. But for some reason I was hesitant. I think it was probable because the whole thing was about pixies. I don’t have anything against pixies, but the whole topic of faerie creatures never really appealed to me as much as some other topics did. But I was still willing to give it a chance.
I have decided that the most perfect words to describe it are okay, unmemorable, and lack-luster. The plot was just alright. Nothing remarkable or noteworthy. I mean, the whole thing with pixies is pretty original – when’s the last times you’ve read about a pixie stalker? – but she can’t just ride on mythical creature-ness alone. I was unimpressed. Basically the whole plot was Zara denying over and over again that pixies exist. I believe my friends, I don’t believe my friends, I believe them, I don’t, I belive them, I don’t. Over and over. Everything moved so slowly and hardly anything happened at all. The most action-packed part of the story wasn’t even action-packed. It was exactly like the rest of the story. Like the whole book was one gigantic introduction to set everything up nicely for the rest of the series. Not enough happened for people to actually say there was a plot.
The characters were also very average. Very blah. There was nothing to them, really. Zara White, the main character was always just kind of there. She was boring and lifeless (and not in an I-feel-bad-for-you-because-you’re-so-distraught-you-dad-died way).What was weird was that in addition to being monotonous and dull, she was prone to absurd panic-attacks. She was almost like a contradiction just being herself. Not a very good character and certainly not one that I find easily relatable. Issie as a character was pretty good but, again, nothing that special. She wasn’t as bad as Zara, but she was just there the whole time. Devyn was a pretty good character – like Issie - but (do I really have to say it again?) he wasn’t that great. There was character named Nick who I didn’t bother to mention in the gist because his character is just weird. Massive hottie-hear-throb from the moment Zara lays eyes on him. Half the time he’s the cliché sensitive perfect boyfriend that makes even dead-like Zara swoon (but not me, as a reader) and the other times his short-temper flares up and he’s the biggest jerk ever. He was high maintenance and annoying at best. Not cute or sweet as I’m sure he was intended to be. So overall characters were utterly mediocre.
The writing style itself was okay. It was caught in an awkward place in between intentionally-formal-sounding and ooh-it-feels-like-the-character-is-talking-to-me styles which kind of just made it seem like Zara was half-robot. But, that being said, it wasn’t bad enough that I wanted to stop reading the book altogether. What I think this author needs to work on is improving her characters and plot, while keeping the writing style like her improved-characters. She has to make it sound like it’s them talking, not someone random or unrelated. Perhaps this stiff style was purposeful and was meant to accentuate Zara’s grief over losing her father. If this was the case, it was poorly executed because the style just came out sounding OFF. One thing I actually really liked about this book was that instead of chapter titles there was a name of a certain phobia and what it was. It was really cool. I love random bits of knowledge like that. I’m not sure if that’s technically considered writing style, but I’ll put it here anyway. Makes her writing overall seem better.
The cover and title. Both are immensely important to selling the book and getting people to want to read it in the first place. The title, I think, is really good. I always lean towards one-word titles because I think they’re intriguing and dramatic, and a one-word title like Need certainly makes you stop and consider it. The cover is pretty good, if a little odd (with the pixie dust lip-gloss). It certainly isn’t the best cover I’ve ever seen, but it’s not bad.
The book as a whole was a let-down. I don’t know what I had expected, but it was something better than this. Need is a very mediocre read. Nothing truly HORRIBLE about it, but nothing good either. It all balances out to something that I wouldn’t remember reading. Something boring, unremarkable and, frankly, a waste of a read. I wouldn’t recommend it, but I wouldn’t strongly advise against it if your heart’s set on reading it.
Real Teen Rating~ C : Ehhh…
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