3.5 Stars: Ok...that was a super strange ride. But I am glad I read it. More like science-fiction than thriller, albeit there are some thrilling moments. A page-turning, bizarre tale.

“The Need” by Helen Phillips, is about a woman named Molly who’s husband, David, is away for a two-week work stint. Because her husband is out of the country, she is forced to balance her demanding career (as a paleobotanist) and the care of her two, very young children. As readers, we meet her on a rather frightening evening when she hears the footsteps of an intruder. Anyone who is a parent will relate quite well to Molly’s terrifying ordeals. Heck, even if you’re not a parent, you will understand her predicaments well. There is nothing more I can say about the plot line without ruining the story for you. Suffice it to say that if this vague description interests you, you should pick it up (you’ll probably finish it in one sitting).

What I liked about the book was the frenzied pace at which this story unfolded. I liked the dreamlike state in which the author pulls the reader. I felt Molly’s real fear. I also liked the tight ending that still left the door open many different interpretations.

Thank you to Netgalley, Author Helen Phillips, and Simon and Schuster for providing me with the ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review. Due out July 9th, 2019.

No one does speculative fiction better than Helen Phillips, and I am HERE. FOR. IT. Her writing is so clever and imaginative, and I'm frankly in awe of her talent. The first quarter of this story will have you biting all your nails off, heart racing. The rest is like a fever dream walkabout in the best way.

The most compelling thing is the TRUE depiction of motherhood - the bliss, the horror, the love, the fatigue - that whiplash momentum carrying you from moment to unexpected moment that depicts motherhood. I also found the children themselves incredibly realistic, fleshed out characters that I rarely come across in literature.

I will say - this book is either for you, or it isn't. I can't imagine there's much in between. Open your mind, and give it try!

I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Thank you NetGalley.

The Need is a truly unique book. We start off with most parent's biggest fear. An intruder enters their home while mom is alone with the kiddos. Who the intruder is.... is shocking.. The twists in this book are so unexpected. It wasn't what i expected, bu tit kept me on the edge o fmy seat for sure!

The Need is one of the most intriguing books I have read, since probably Phillips last book. I started this last night and finished first thing this morning, I absolutely needed to know what happened. This is speculative fiction at it’s core.

Molly’s husband is a musician and on tour, leaving her alone to care for her two young children along with a nanny. Molly is an anthropologist an oversees a site where they have found relics that have caused somewhat of an uproar. When she is at home she lovingly cares for her children. At night she begins to hears noise and then she meets the intruder. What happens from there is extremely strange, but oh so good.

Helen Phillips is such a rich imaginative writer. With each book that she writes, I quickly put this on my To Be Read Stack. This book does not disappoint. I am not sure this book will be for everyone, but if you are willing to take a chance I would highly recommend this one.

Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book, for an honest opinion

This is not what you will expect from reading the blurb. It's so hard to say anything about it without giving away major plot points, so I'll just say it's about a very dark realization of a common fantasy of motherhood. I would recommend to fans of Blake Crouch who are also interested in diving into all the dark and ugly parts of motherhood. I'm not a parent, so I couldn't personally relate, but I thought the author painted a really vivid picture of the strain Molly was under and the sheer exhaustion that can come from being completely beholden to small humans.

Wow! What in the world did I just read? The Need starts off in what every parent fears the most. You're at home with your children and an intruder is somewhere inside your house. The back and forth between Molly's day at work and her realizing someone was in the house was terrifying. The realization of who this intruder was is mind blowing. Just when you think this book is going one way, it does a 180. It kept me on the very edge of my seat. The other huge reason I loved this book so much was Molly's honesty about motherhood and her relationship with her children. It was such a breath of fresh air. She acknowledged her complete and utter love for her children. At the same time, she acknowledged the frustration, exhaustion and the overwhelming feeling of having two small children. This book was not what I expected at all, but it kept me engaged until the very last page. This will definitely be a summer hit!

My thanks to Simon & Schuster, and Netgalley.
I really wanted to love this book. I didn't. I think the synopsis was rather misleading. Still, this book started strong. I was intrigued, and a wee bit freaked out! Quickly, I realized what was up. You will too. It's stated fairly soon. What I didn't get was all the lactating. I do understand how the author tied it all into being a mom, and all that goes with it. Yet, I kept thinking, "for shits sake, woman. Wear a pad or throw some 🚽 toilet paper in there!"
All of this is just a teeny, tiny representation of my annoyance.
First off, is Molly sane or slightly post partum? I would not have chose the path she took with Moll. Real or imagined, I'd have killed her!
Worse yet? The ending. FULL STOP.
I can't say more, because I already have said too much. I'm glad this was a fairly quick read. It wasn't bad, but it sure as heck wasn't great either.

I read to 25% and DNf'd. It was well-written but I didn't realize from the blurb and the publisher's description that this was sci-fi. I appreciated the MC's stress and fatigue and thought the exhaustion that comes from parenting young children was well-portrayed. However, I lost count of the times we had to read about her leaking breasts, but it was completely overdone.

Thanks for the opportunity to read this book, but this is a case of me being the wrong reader for this book. Since I didn't finish it, I will not be reviewing it on social media.

This was a strange book. Compelling in it's uneasiness, the story navigates an archaeological pit ("The Pit") that seems to be a mysterious seam between universes so that strange ephemera keeps appearing, like a penny, a new Bible, soda bottle, etc. And now there are two of Molly. The strangeness of the book, paired with the constant exhaustion and worry of Molly, mother of two very young children left alone by a traveling husband for a couple of weeks, kept leading me to wonder what was real and what was perhaps hallucination. I didn't quite reach any definitive conclusions, but the overall feeling of the book was frenetic, hazy, and you could just feel the exhaustion of the mother. Creepy in a very subtle way.

Molly is tending to her children when she hears footsteps in the other room. But that can’t be, she must be imagining them? This books shows a unique look at motherhood. I don’t want to say too much and give it away, so just go ahead and preorder a copy now!

Since training kept me so tied up the past two weeks, it’s been a while since I read a book in less than 24 hours. This book made it easy! Once I started I could not put it down. I had to know what was going to happen next. When I finished this book my first thought was “what the heck did I just read? But I liked it?” This book is different from really anything I can think of. It kept me on my toes the entire time. I highly recommend this one if you’re looking for something different!

Thank you to netgalley and Simon & Schuster for allowing me to read and review this this book in advance!

Let’s say you have 2 minutes to concisely explain the plot of this book where your audience will have no further questions. You’re making a good effort but see yourself sitting in the audience, cringing because you’re doing a horribly inadequate job and wanting to scream because your other self knows in a short while you and all you love will be dead. Are you losing it due to lack of sleep, too many demands between family and job or have you inadvertently opened a portal to a parallel time thru your career as a paleobotanist?
To complicate matters, you’re an extremely likable person, very strong-willed and independent, and you have 2 beautiful and bubbly kids that your audience just falls in love with. They can’t look away, but you can’t bear to see the pity and concern in their eyes. Helen Phillips’ eloquent, emotional and disturbing writing style makes me feel like this is my stage. And I, like the audience, can’t look away from her book. I eagerly devoured this; yes, I still had questions after the last page. But I loved every page of the journey. What an evocative, unusual, fresh and enveloping read.
(I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks so much to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for making it available.)

This may in fact be the weirdest book I've ever read. Every few pages resulted in a "What the f***!" reaction. I'd definitely categorize this as a total mindf**** read in the sense that now even after I am done, I have no idea what I just read haha. The beginning felt like the thrillers I love, but then sh*t just got really, really weird. This is definitely one of those reads I need to discuss with others because now I'm dying to know whether it was just me or if others found this one especially odd haha.

Thank you NetGalley for my free review copy in exchange for my honest review!

OK y’all. I’m going to need you to get a copy of this book, buckle your seatbelt, read it as fast as you can, and then immediately message me so that we can talk about it. Because holy moly, this was WILD.

Molly is, in a word, a working mom: She loves her two kids fiercely and to the depth of her soul, but she’s also exhausted by the day-to-day slog of raising young kids. She genuinely loves her husband, loves her job, loves her life. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t tired. Then one night she’s home alone with her kids and hears an intruder in the other room. After a highly relatable I-don’t-like-what-my-gut-is-telling-me-so-I’m-going-to-convince-myself-that-I’m-overthinking-this internal monologue, it turns out that there is an intruder.

Throughout this tense, terrifying scene, we get chapter flashbacks to the earlier part of her workday. She’s an archaeologist (of the plant fossil variety), but she recently found some really Twilight-Zone-esque artifacts that have caused their little dig site to turn into a sensation. They get admirers and death threats alike.

That’s really only the first few chapters of the book, but I can’t really tell you more than that without spoilers. All I can say is that when you find out who the intruder is, you are going to be like whaaaaaaaaat. And then the rest of the book will blow your mind. I’m still reeling. And how about that ending?!?!?

Molly’s character (in all its facets) is so excellently done. And her thoughts, struggles, and fierce love are the stuff that the human experience is made of. To bring that to light so effectively while also blowing the reader’s mind and keeping us on the edge of our seats is the stuff of masterful writing.

I’m not usually big on thrillers. But this book was so much more than a thriller. It was a puzzle, a statement, a question, and a WILD trip.

I'm not usually a fan of domestic/psychological thrillers, but I gave this a shot at my coworker's recommendation. I thought the writing was absolutely riveting, which is surprising given I'm not a parent. It sure made me feel the intensity and paranoia of motherhood!

When all's said and done, though, I'm not quite sure how I feel about it as an overall story. It did give me some vaguely James Vandermeer-esque creepy creeps, which I love, but I think there were just too many unanswered questions in the end for me to really love it.

I don’t like to give bad reviews at all but this book is nothing that I like to read I don’t really like thrillers I couldn’t really get into it at all I read it but it felt like I was pushing myself through it. It was confusing and like scary and confusing

Not at all what I expected. I wasn’t ready for this kind of story. I see what Philips meant to do, but it didn’t quite work for me, and I had to reread the blurb and praises to make sure I hadn’t skim over the word “horror”, a genre I dislike. There’s something ungraspable about this story that sometimes reminded me of Malerman’s BIRD BOX and Golding’s LITTLE DARLINGS.

Nevertheless, the writing style—rushed, scattered, all over the place—from a sleep-deprived mother is spot-on and dead-set relatable; I could so see myself in her thoughts and actions actually that while at times they amused me, at others they just exhausted me.

Passed the revelation of who the intruder is, the story went downhill. I couldn’t figure what the storyline was, where it was heading, let alone toward which genre it wanted to go…is it horror? A thriller? Women’s Fiction? I’m sorry to say that to me it felt more like a nightmare. An actual bizarre, bizarre nightmare.

What to say about this book? One part beach read thriller, another part weird sci-fi, an in-depth exploration of motherhood...and so much more.

"The Need" is seriously good. It's disorienting and dizzying to read, in a way that all solid books are. The plot will linger with you and plant the seeds for nightmares.

I enjoyed this book but not as much as I thought I would based on the introduction. It had some sections where it didn't quite seem to make complete sense for me or maybe didn't live up to the plot line that I expected. I still thought it was easily readable with good writing and would recommend anything by this author.
Still worth a read.

#TheNeed #NetGalley

Well............what a strange story. Speculative fiction has been hit or miss for me. This one a hit. Every mother who has juggled the many responsibilities in her life, I believe, will find this book meaningful. The less said better here, it's really better to read without any preconceived notions. I do want to say though, that despite the book summary, this is not a thriller. Yes it is intense in parts, but not for the reasons one would think. If you are in the mood for something different, well written, give this one a try. The young daughter in the story is a real hoot which lightened things up a bit.

ARC from Netgalley.

An interesting read that I was sucked into! I didn't have many expectations for this book, but it was definitely not what I was anticipating. I was thinking it would be one thing, easily categorized in it's neat little genre and then boom...not at all what I expected.