Need by Carrie Jones

Review contains spoilers.

After the sudden death of her father leads to a downward spiral of depression, Zara’s mother sends her to live with her Grandmother in rural Maine. Which is strange since Zara has never once visited her grandmother’s house – instead her grandmother had always gone to visit them. Nevertheless, there she is, freezing in a chilly Maine winter, starting a new school, meeting new friends, and being followed around by the same creepy guy who has been showing up since her dad died.

Need is a paranormal romance with were-creatures, pixies, and normal humans all mixed into the pot. For the most part it works, I certainly read it very quickly and was always interested to see where it would lead next. However, there certainly were parts of the book that made me groan. Mostly the unbelievable plan where Zara and her crew foil the evil boy blood loving pixies. She surrounds them with an iron fence and they are stuck in their pixie mansion. But pixies can fly!!! We just learned that a few pages earlier so I was unsure as to why they couldn’t just fly over the fence and escape. The book is also all in the present tense, which jarred me out of the story on more than one occasion.

One of the reviews I read strongly suggested that this was reminiscent of Twilight, but I didn’t find it overly so. Nick, our werewolf hero and love interest of Zara, did have some similarities to Edward in that he was a bit bossy, a bit over-protective, and there were many mentions of his extreme good looks. However, Zara, even though she does need help, didn’t strike me as overly similar to Bella. Zara had strong outside interests, maintained outside friendships, didn’t think she was unworthy of Nick’s love (and did go on about it ad nauseum either). Really she seemed to me to be rather independent.

I think the girls will snatch this one up, not least because of the amazingly beautiful cover. I don’t think they’ll be disappointed either.