Need by Carrie Jones
Apr. 12th, 2010 12:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Pain shoots through my head.
Fireworks. Explosions. All inside my brain.
The white world goes dark and I know what’s about to happen.
Zara White suspects a freaky guy is stalking her. She memorises phobias and chants them when she’s nervous. OK, she hasn’t exactly been herself since her stepfather died. But moving to a freezing Maine town to stay with her grandmother is supposed to be the perfect fix – so her mum says.
Except, this plan of sending Zara away to help her stay sane? Yeah, not working. Turns out the stalker is not a figment of Zara’s imagination. He’s still following her, leaving behind an eerie trail of gold dust. There’s something not right – not human – in this sleepy Maine town, and all the signs are pointing to Zara.
Following the sudden death of her stepfather, Zara White moves from South Carolina to Bedford, Maine to stay with her grandmother. But Zara has a stalker – a strange man who leaves a trail of golden dust – who she continues to see in Maine. Not only that but there’s something wrong with Bedford – teenage boys are disappearing and someone in the woods around her grandmother’s house keeps calling to her. As Zara makes friends with fellow students Issie and Devyn (who’s in a wheelchair following a car accident), she’s drawn to Nick, a loner who other students warn her to stay away from. All the time her stalker is getting closer to her. Unravelling the mystery of who he is and why he’s interested in her will force Zara to confront her past and who she is.
Zara’s first person narration has a convincing voice. She repeats the names of different phobias to herself when she’s scared (each chapter is prefaced by a definition of a phobia) and she’s an active member of Amnesty International. She’s also an irritating ninny with a habit of deliberately putting herself into danger to advance the plot (e.g. running around in woods at night when she’s been warned not to) and having her mouth fall open whenever she’s surprised. Despite the warnings of her schoolmates, she’s drawn to Nick, a bog-standard hunk who drives a MINI Cooper (a brand that gets name-checked constantly) and who wants to protect her. The inevitable romance makes for a boring read.
Devyn and Issie would be virtually interchangeable characters were it not for the fact that Devyn is in a wheelchair. However even this promising element is dispensed with towards the end in a ‘twist’ that was easy to spot. Indeed, it’s the predictability of the plot that made this so dull and far from enlivening it, the revelations of various were-creatures and pixies seem trite and at times, ridiculous. There are constant allusions to Stephen King’s books, which only serves to show how poor this is in comparison.
The book ends with a set-up for the sequel, CAPTIVATE. It will doubtless have a huge number of readers but I won’t be one of them.
The Verdict:
Although this will be popular with YA paranormal romance fans, I thought that this was a bland, derivative read with a dull and irritating main character and I simply couldn’t read the main idea of evil pixies with a straight face.
Fireworks. Explosions. All inside my brain.
The white world goes dark and I know what’s about to happen.
Zara White suspects a freaky guy is stalking her. She memorises phobias and chants them when she’s nervous. OK, she hasn’t exactly been herself since her stepfather died. But moving to a freezing Maine town to stay with her grandmother is supposed to be the perfect fix – so her mum says.
Except, this plan of sending Zara away to help her stay sane? Yeah, not working. Turns out the stalker is not a figment of Zara’s imagination. He’s still following her, leaving behind an eerie trail of gold dust. There’s something not right – not human – in this sleepy Maine town, and all the signs are pointing to Zara.
Following the sudden death of her stepfather, Zara White moves from South Carolina to Bedford, Maine to stay with her grandmother. But Zara has a stalker – a strange man who leaves a trail of golden dust – who she continues to see in Maine. Not only that but there’s something wrong with Bedford – teenage boys are disappearing and someone in the woods around her grandmother’s house keeps calling to her. As Zara makes friends with fellow students Issie and Devyn (who’s in a wheelchair following a car accident), she’s drawn to Nick, a loner who other students warn her to stay away from. All the time her stalker is getting closer to her. Unravelling the mystery of who he is and why he’s interested in her will force Zara to confront her past and who she is.
Zara’s first person narration has a convincing voice. She repeats the names of different phobias to herself when she’s scared (each chapter is prefaced by a definition of a phobia) and she’s an active member of Amnesty International. She’s also an irritating ninny with a habit of deliberately putting herself into danger to advance the plot (e.g. running around in woods at night when she’s been warned not to) and having her mouth fall open whenever she’s surprised. Despite the warnings of her schoolmates, she’s drawn to Nick, a bog-standard hunk who drives a MINI Cooper (a brand that gets name-checked constantly) and who wants to protect her. The inevitable romance makes for a boring read.
Devyn and Issie would be virtually interchangeable characters were it not for the fact that Devyn is in a wheelchair. However even this promising element is dispensed with towards the end in a ‘twist’ that was easy to spot. Indeed, it’s the predictability of the plot that made this so dull and far from enlivening it, the revelations of various were-creatures and pixies seem trite and at times, ridiculous. There are constant allusions to Stephen King’s books, which only serves to show how poor this is in comparison.
The book ends with a set-up for the sequel, CAPTIVATE. It will doubtless have a huge number of readers but I won’t be one of them.
The Verdict:
Although this will be popular with YA paranormal romance fans, I thought that this was a bland, derivative read with a dull and irritating main character and I simply couldn’t read the main idea of evil pixies with a straight face.
