Need

I just recently read the book Need by Carrie Jones. Need on the surface seems like a really cool idea for a book. There's a man stalking the main character, Zara, leaving a trail of gold dust, and she recites the names of different phobias to calm herself down. So Zara and her friends take it into their own hands to defeat the pixie king that is hunting Zara down to be their queen. Sounds like a good idea, right? However, once her boyfriend and practically every other character besides the pixies and her best friend became some sort of were (werewolf, were-tiger, were-bear, etc.) the story just got out of hand. It started moving too quickly without enough character development to match. I feel like Jones had the idea of a plot down, but forgot about all her lovely characters. Most of them had the start of some sort of personality, but it sorted just ended there. Even the main character, Zara, had almost nothing. Jones characterized her by the fact that she recites phobias when she's nervous or scared, and forgot about anything else. To give an example, it's like in Twilight by Stephenie Meyer where the only trait she gave Bella was that she was clumsy. Really clumsy. So clumsy that she seemed to be just tripping over things every chapter. Oh, poor Bella! So unique and clumsy! Zara's character just kind of seemed thin and Bella-esque to me. Her reactions were just too generic and the entire story played out way too fast, not giving time to really develop any relationships thoroughly. Granted, I was skeptical about this book from the beginning because of the quote on the back stating that this book would be the result if Stephenie Meyer and Stephen King teamed up together to write a book, but that part was actually true. This book had really great scary moments and a wonderful plot built up, like Stephen King's writing, but a huge downfall in the character development and relationships, which was where the Stephenie Meyer side came in. All in all a book you can skip, unless you're a twilight kind of person and you want something to fill your hunger once you finish the books.