I’ve finished the second book in Carrie Jones’ Need series and I’m having trouble mustering much more than a “meh” about it. It wasn’t bad by any means, I think it just suffered from the book 2 blahs.
Synopsis: Zara and her friends knew they hadn’t solved the pixie problem for good. Far from it. The king’s needs grow deeper every day he’s stuck in captivity, while his control over his people gets weaker. It’s made him vulnerable. And now there’s a new king in town. A turf war is imminent, since the new pixie king, Astley, is moving in quickly. Nick nearly killed him in the woods on day one, but Zara came to his rescue. Astley swears that he and Zara are destined to be together, that he’s one of the good guys. Nick isn’t buying it, though Zara isn’t as sure — despite herself, she wants to trust the new king. But it’s a lot more than her relationship with Nick that is at stake. It’s her life — and his.
Like the first book, the writing is very stream of consciousness. This time though it was much more chaotic and I felt like I was being whipped around in a tornado. Like the first book, you really identify with Zara’s emotions… she’s just a little further off the deep end now. Maybe that’s the point.
I think my biggest beef with this book is the utter lack of a specific antagonist. The “Bad Guy” is an amophorus group of bad pixies, distinct from the good pixies (this is a paradigm shift from book 1). They don’t really do much, Astley just talks about how they’re out of control and he wants to stop them. They’re the only people I can point my finger at as the bad guys but there’s no conflict witht them. The primary conflict is all internal. The whole book is a set up for Zara to make one decision. Then, BAM. She makes it, and the book is over. I felt really let down when I finished it.
The secondary characters are much the same… flat. We’re introduced to two new characters who both have lots of potential, but like the bad guy in book 1, don’t quite live up to it. Astley seems so very one-track-minded and his obsession with Zara never made any sense to me. I think it was supposed to be a destiny thing, but I never quite got there. I really hope Cassidy gets a chance to shine in the third book, she’s got the potential to be a lot of fun, but we spend most of book 2 very suspicious of her.
One redeeming thing from the book is the references to Buffy. As a child of the 90′s, I really enjoyed that. There’s even one point where Issie says to Zara “I have them all downloaded, if you’d just watch Buffy you’d understand all of this.” It made me chuckle.
TL;DR
- Title: Captivate – Amazon link
- Author: Carrie Jones – Author’s website
- Genre: YA Fantasy
- Length: 304 pages in paperback
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
- Is it worth purchasing: I wouldn’t purchase new. If the third book winds up being good, then it might be worth a used purchase just to get to the third book. If you liked the first book, the second’s worth a check out at the library
