BOOK INFO

Title: The Need
Author: Helen Phillips
Publisher: Simon Schuster
Publish Date: July 9, 2019
Genre: Horror
Series: na
My Rating: 3/5

BOOK BLURB

When Molly, home alone with her two young children, hears footsteps in the living room, she tries to convince herself it’s the sleep deprivation. She’s been hearing things these days. Startling at loud noises. Imagining the worst-case scenario. It’s what mothers do, she knows.

But then the footsteps come again, and she catches a glimpse of movement.

Suddenly Molly finds herself face-to-face with an intruder who knows far too much about her and her family. As she attempts to protect those she loves most, Molly must also acknowledge her own frailty. Molly slips down an existential rabbit hole where she must confront the dualities of motherhood: the ecstasy and the dread; the languor and the ferocity; the banality and the transcendence as the book hurtles toward a mind-bending conclusion.

In The Need, Helen Phillips has created a subversive, speculative thriller that comes to life through blazing, arresting prose and gorgeous, haunting imagery. Helen Phillips has been anointed as one of the most exciting fiction writers working today, and The Need is a glorious celebration of the bizarre and beautiful nature of our everyday lives.

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MY REVIEW

Molly believes she is imaging things when she hears someone in her home. She soon faces the intruder, and realizes things are more complicated than she ever imagined.

Molly is a sleep-deprived working mother. Between her kids, work, and missing her out-of-town husband, she has a lot on her plate. Then things go sideways. While I found it to be an intriguing look at motherhood and survival, the story fell flat for me. The opening was great, but then things get a little too slow and repetitive.

A complex and unique domestic horror novel. This is a fairly short novel, so it makes for a quick read. Eerie and cryptic.