Need by Carrie Jones

A couple days ago, I went to Changing Hands Bookstore with a gift card and had a pretty hard time deciding which book to get. I narrowed it down to Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater, Beautiful Creatures, and Need by Carrie Jones. After much deliberating, I picked Need by Carrie Jones. Why, you may ask? Well, I decided that my brain was taking too long in deciding which story it would like to read, so I let my eyes chose. And my eyes liked Need. Such a pretty cover, don’t you think?

Title: Need
Author: Carrie Jones
Number of Pages: 306
Published by: Bloomsbury
Rating: 4/5

Summery: 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.


I honestly expected this book to be average. I’m happy to say that I was pleasantly surprised. The writing was decent, the characters were easy to love and connect with, and the over all storyline sucked me in. Definitely above average.

The writing was good in the sense that it had good flow and the dialogue was fun and quirky. In fact, I absolutely loved the dialogue. Each character had their own unique voice and it really made the story that much more fun to read. But I did have a few issues with the description. There were so many opportunities to use more description. For example, Zara (our main character) says that the houses in Maine look a lot different from the ones in her hometown, Charleston. But it’s left at that. No differences in the houses are described. This is one in many examples of nonexistent description. I don’t know about other people, but one thing I love in a book is good description of the characters surroundings.

Now the characters, I thought, was one of the best things about the book. Betty (Zara’s grandmother) is the coolest fictional grandmother I have ever read about. The way she talked with people and how they responded to her made me laugh out loud. She didn’t put up with anyone’s crap. But my favorite character would have to be Zara; mainly because of just how she is and how she responds to people. Zara is always thinking about others; or according to her grandmother, “Always trying to save the world.”. I think more characters should have this quality. It was refreshing being inside the head of someone who didn’t always think about themselves. Zara was a genuinely cool person. Her obsession with reciting phobias and making sarcastic remarks made her even more likeable.

The storyline was definitely something new to me. I don’t have a lot of experience with pixies, so everything in this book seemed very fresh. I didn’t know anything about the mystical creatures, nor did I have a clue as to what would happen next, which I love in a book. The overall story was well balanced and evenly paced. Carrie Jones did a great job writing it and I will most likely be reading the sequel, Captivate. Or anything else she decides to write for that matter.

Although this book is not a ‘Go Out Right Now and Buy It’ kind of book, I still recommend it for a rainy day.
Second Book of 2010