 | Need – Carrie Jones Narrated by – Julia Whelan
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I hate when a book immediately grabs my interest with an intriguing plot and likable characters and then fails to deliver. This is exactly the problem I had with Need.
First, I listened to this on audio, and while the narrator successfully mimicked the Maine accents, when it came to the MC, Zara, the voice used for her was sometimes a southern accent and sometimes no accent at all. This is a small thing, true, but very noticeable when listening. Other than that, I think that the narration was fine.
I enjoyed many of the characters on the surface, Zara, her grandmother, friends, and boyfriend. They were all extremely likable, but they never got much deeper than that surface likability, other than Zara. Zara enjoys reciting phobias to calm herself, this was a mildly interesting aspect to her personality and the various phobias she named were sometimes pretty amusing. The pixie king was a very weak villain, I didn't believe it. And while I can understand that he was meant to be more of a "not all bad" type of villain, it didn't come across in any real believable way. The romance between Zara and Nick was just kind of "meh" for me. I didn't care. The best part of the novel for me was Zara's grandmother, a feisty woman with plenty of wit. I would have liked to have read a lot more about her.
The problems I had with Need was that the plot was never really developed, it was very thin and the way plot was resolved was absolutely absurd. Even within a fantasy, I need to feel a measure of believability, and this was also missing for me. I finished the book and was left feeling quite underwhelmed and a bit disappointed.
Rating 2 – not for me but someone else might enjoy it.
Check out a review from someone who loved Need for a different point of view
http://ahauntofancientpeace.blogspot.com/2010/01/need-by-carrie-jones.html
