Carrie Jones

After her stepfather's death, Zara goes to live with her grandmother in a small town in Maine, where her new friends tell her that her odd stalker may be a pixie king, and that only "were" creatures can stop him from taking souls.

Need

Depressed after the death of her stepfather, high school junior Zara goes to live with her grandmother in a small Maine town, where new friends tell Zara the strange man she keeps seeing may be a pixie king, and that only "were" creatures can stop him from taking souls.

Monicap

Ah… this was a very… interesting book, to say the least.
This is a fairy book, in case anyone is wondering.
In the beginning, it reminded me of Twilight a little, because everyone knew her name for the same reason everyone knew Bella’s name in Twilight. And that was lame.
This whole book also felt very… juvenile. The characters seemed only half-there, if you ask me. and they didn’t entirely make sense.
Also, I think there should be a census or something where all the authors get together and make a lis of names like these are names for good characters, these are names for antagonists, these are names for love interests, and no author should be allowed to take a name from the list of love interests and name an antagonist that, because at the beginning I was lulled into liking Ian for no reason other than he as named Ian an we all remember how nice Ian was in The Host. So.
This wasn’t a BAD book. It wasn’t the BEST book, either, though. It was an… interesting book.
Yeah, that about sums it up. Interesting.
Now, just cuz I have to, here’s some fave quotes:
	
“Yep. You drop an ice cube in the toilet and dance around chanting ‘Snow. Snow. Snow.’”
“Until it melts.”

This is (an incomplete) quote about how the character performs the snow dance. Now, I’m not sure if it varies ffrom state to state or if mine is different just because, but my version of the snow dance says you must drop and ice cube down the toilet at an odd-numbered hour (1,3,5,7,9, etc.) and then turn in a circle three times while chanting ‘Snow. Snow. Snow.’ And then flush the ice cube own the toilet. It this ritual carries over past the hour (1:01, 3:01, etc) it’s invalidated.
How do YOU do the snow dance? Any variations?
Seriously, I’m curious.

“Oh my God! Issie’s a bunny, isn’t she? Do they have those? Do they have werebunnies?”

No, but it would be TOTALLY awesome if they did.

“I’ll take care of them. You lovebirds just sit on the couch and think swooning things at each other.”

“Think swooning things” I’ll be sure to keep THAT mind when I get a boyfriend.

Uh… that’s it, for this book. So, bye.

Alina

Zara Whites has moved just to Maine after witnessing the death of her stepfather. She believes she has a stalker who has also shown up in Maine. There’s something strange about him: he leaves gold dust everywhere he goes. By working with her new friends, she discovers what he wants and how to stop him.

The cover of this book features gold-dusted lips set on a pale face, and dead forest branches creeping up the figure’s neck. I didn’t like the story very much. It’s Twilight redone. As I read, I found the writing to be corny and the plot line to be grating. The plot was so predictable that I could predict the entire story within 30 pages.

I found Zara and the other characters to be superficial, and their conversations to be almost painful to read. Neither of them seem to remember (or know) who they are. I felt it was hard to connect to the characters and their story. This, along with the lack of real depth and meaningful dialogue, left me feeling disappointed.

Primitive urges propel author pixies to target humans, making it hard to empathize with them and painting them as flat antagonists. As a result, it’s difficult to sympathize with them, and they appear one-dimensional villains. It makes Zara’s struggle against them less interesting and meaningful. Though the story contains werewolves, were-eagles, and were-tigers, their significance is not great. 

This novel lacks depth in every part - it glosses everything over (except for the meaningless conversations between Zara and her friends). The story lacks a real plot and characters feel hollow and flat. Even the setting is generic and uninteresting.

Overall, this novel is a disappointing read.

Elizabeth Neill

I loved this book and I can't want to read the next one

Alexandra Mellas

Carrie Jone's Need is aiding the effort to provide Young Adult Readers with new forms of supernatural, and romantic, fiction. Zara White is depressed after the death of her Step-Dad, the only Father she has ever known. Her Mother doesn't know how to handle her and sends her to live with her Step Grandmother in cold, wintry Maine.
Unfortunately for Zara, she doesn't get much chance to relax. There is a guy stalking her, and he is leaving a trail of gold dust behind him. According to Zara's new friends, Nick, Issie and Devyn, this can only mean one thing. The Pixies want Zara.

Need is a new branch of the extensive supernatural young adult reading tree. Since the massive popularity of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series, the paranormal genre has blossomed and is full of werewolf and vampire stories. Some authors are looking outside the traditional paranormal box, such as Tricia Rayburn's Siren, and now Carrie Jone's Need books.

The books are aimed at the same audience as Twilight. It has the same voice, the same fragile but determined heroine narrator with the same obsessive tendencies of Twilight. Zara White is neurotic. She quotes phobia's to suppress her fears, she is overwhelmed by the attention of all the good looking boys at school and she is completely dense. In some reviews there is a trend to compare Zara and Bella Swan, they have the same attitudes and the same reliance on their buff part-human boys but they are also very different. 
Where Bella is completely reliant on Jacob and Edward for her protection, and sanity; Zara goes out of her way to keep her friends safe. It is as though Jones has gone out of her way to make Zara a more independent character than Bella. Yet, she is still an annoying protagonist.
Super liberal Zara is a member of Amnesty International, she is a pacifist, a hippy, a young woman with strong moral beliefs. Or so she wants to believe. It doesn't take long for Zara's constant moral preaching, concerning the situations in Darfur or the War on Terror, to annoy you. She never stays on one topic long enough to educate the reader and seems merely fickle in her support. As for being a pacifist, it is a word largely used and a action rarely seen. 
"What does that mean? Don't do anything stupid? I bet he wouldn't tell Nick not to do anything stupid. But because I am a pacifist I say nothing." (p142)
The word pacifist is thrown around like an identity anchor. Jones wants us to believe that the events of the book drive Zara away from her natural instincts and urge her to act with anger, with violence and without remorse in order to save the community. The problem isn't the change from anti-violence to vigilante, but the repetition Jones uses. Jones writes as though she needs to justify the why of things, why Zara is defending her friends, why she supports Amnesty International and so on.
Another issue is Jones word choice and phrasing. While at times justified, Jones' description of Zara feeling 'Spidery' or 'Squiggly' seem infantile. Just like when Zara rescues a dog and repeatedly refers to it as 'doggie'. Jones' representation of the mannerism and speech of 17 yr olds is somewhat off base. Having only just based that age myself, I resent the idea that we are as shallow and childlike as Jones portrays. Most 17 year olds can say 'dog', or 'tingle' without needing to dumb it down to childlike imitations of the intention.
However, the plot of Need is both original and intriguing, and the portrayal of pixies was exciting. Jones has developing an interesting supernatural plot that has plenty of room to develop in further novels. The next books in the Need series are book two:Captivate and Book Three: Entice.

An interesting read that is definitely aimed at younger female readers. Pick it up if you are interested in a different paranormal angle.

Tijana Kovac

So I'm a bit cynical from being older and having read many YA books in my hey day when twilight and hunger games were popular and the slew of novels that came with them. It seemed promising and the phobia aspect was interesting. But I just really didn't think it was developed very well and was unrealistic. The whole "it's on the Internet so it must be real" was just downright silly. I had an inkling that a lot of the characters knew more than they were letting on which they did... for no proper reason, are dire times like this really not constitutong laying everything on the table? Zara was not a very smart character and made so many stupid mistakes. I know no character is meant to be flawless and stupid decisions make plot happen but this was too much. Not to mention for such a short book it was too slow and took forever for anything to come to a head and the jlurney to the pay off was not good enough for me to really care. Seemed like a lot of half assed explanong was shoved in at the end and I'm not impressed enough by any means to continue on with this series. I only finished the book because I wanted to see what happened and if it redeemed itself (it did not)
Now to read something more my speed.

Sinead Heffernan

To me this book seemed far too similar to Twilight.
It starts with a girl moving away from her mother to live with another relative in a small town that's noticeably colder than where she used to live....I could list the other similarities but I really don't want to.

Amanda Kirtzinger

I enjoy the concept of the fae and such however the execution was a little meh in my opinion. Definitely a young adult. I would say more mid teens. I will be reading the rest of the series with this in mind.

Jessica Nottingham

Need is one of those stories that brings together two subplots I have difficulty dealing with separately, in perfect harmony. For anyone who hasn't read this, I don't want to give too much away, but this story is much like Twilight except much easier to read! 

It is refreshing to see a character like Zara in a story like this. Strong, comfortable in her own skin, brave. She is the type of character that is ready to take on anything to save others. I was smitten with the mention of Amnesty International in this book. I love when characters have causes that they support!

Nick? Hunk. We'll leave it at that. Every book that deals with the paranormal needs at least one literary hunk. Word candy if you will?

In the story, Zara has taken to naming phobias as a way to deal with her father's death and everything going on around her. It is actually really fun to learn a new phobia name and cause every time you start a new chapter! I thought this fit in nicely with the overall plot.

I really did like this book. A lot. I cannot wait to read the next one!

Lorien O'Brien

I wasn't sure about this book when I first heard of it. I totally wasn't interested and then I bought it. And then the rest of the quartet. I'm so brilliant that way.

This story follows Zara who's obsessed with phobias and so depressed she hasn't smiled in the four months since her dad died. She's sent by her mom up north to Maine to live with her grandma. She finds friends, two hot guys who want to be her boyfriend, and a string of disappearances that mirror what happened over a decade before, where boys are taken at night into the woods and are never seen from again.

Zara finds herself in the midst of it, with someone constantly calling her name and asking her to go into the woods. Luckily her friends know a little bit more than everyone else and help Zara come up with plans to find the missing boys and keep her alive and completely human.

This book was interesting. It read a bit normal for a paranormal young adult novel, which isn't surprising as it's a debut novel and the first in a series. So regardless of it being a bit cookie-cutter in the setting, what's happening, and how the characters react. It's not a Twilight knockoff, which it easily could be. Sure, city girl moves to a small town to be with a different family member and supernatural happens, but that's just typical paranormal YA. No, seriously, it's pretty standard.

What isn't standard is what she's facing. And how she reacts. No "my boyfriend isn't human" and being just hunkdory with it. Zara flips. Zara doesn't take each change easily. Zara also doesn't take her BF's crap without complaint. And it's rather clear if he tries any of the crap Edward does she's perfect fine with taking an iron poker and whacking someone with it.

I am a bit annoyed we have the "I'm not like other girls" line. It's a stupid line and it seriously needs to stop being in books. Although with Zara heritage revealed it works better than most of the time. However I would think a girl as into causes like Amnesty International would know things like that but whatever.

I love how family is what drives this book. I love how her grandmother is so badass, her mom has been braver than Zara ever thought, how her father, both step and birth, are so important to the story. I really enjoy it. And I love how the best ideas come from Zara and not anyone else.

All in all, while it's a bit typical, I loved it, and the plot had enough twists to keep me entertained. Oh, and I stayed up all night trying to finish it. So it's quite gripping.

Hannah Nugent

Vicky  Nuñez 

Haleemah Sadiah

Ashley Holland 

Amal Hassan

Briar's Reviews

Mae Erceg

Melissa Bragg 

Zara collects phobias the way other high school girls collect lipsticks. Little wonder, since she's had a pretty rough life. Her father left when she was a baby, and her stepfather just died. Her mother's pretty much checked out - in fact, Mom's sent her to live with her grandmother in cold and sleepy Maine to "keep Zara safe." Whatever that means. Zara doesn't think she's in danger; she thinks her mother just can't deal. Zara's wrong. The man she sees everywhere - the tall creepy guy who points at her from the side of the road - yeh, he's not a figment of her imagination. He's a pixie. And not the cute, sweet kind with little wings. Maine's got a whole assortment of unbelievable creatures, like pixies and were-people. And they seem to need something - something from Zara... Look for the other exciting books in the Need series: Captivate, Entice, and coming next year, Endure!