⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1/2
*I won an ARC copy of this book in a goodreads giveaway and this is my honest review based on my reading experience.*
This is a hard book to review because it’s very easy to unintentionally give things away. I would recommend reading The Need in one sitting if at all possible. I made the mistake of reading other books concomitantly so I kept putting it down and picking it back up later. That really stalled the suspense and I wasn’t immersed in the story until I’d finished the others and just focused on this book. Then I didn’t want to put it down because I thought, “Oh, I have to see if this is going where I think it’s going…” *reads on to the ending* Well…I was wrong.
There’s elements of a sci-fi and a thriller, but it’s sort of both and not really either of those. There’s some really creepy almost Donnie Darko-ish moments but there’s no guts and gore scary horror. The Need is it’s own thing which I appreciate but have to admit that I was disappointed when the plot direction I’d foreseen in my head differed so much from the one on the page. In some sense, I felt cheated by missing out on what could have happened.
Ultimately, I think this book is about motherhood and all of the insecurities and messiness that can accompany it. One idea being: could you ever be the mother that you feel your child needs? It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, but it did make me reflect deeply on concepts of motherhood and/or maternalism.
