The Need by Helen Phillips
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a book I've had my eye on for a while and now that I've finished my last big writing project for 2020, I got stuck into it. 😊
Molly is exhausted. Her job as a paleobotanist keeps her as busy as being the mother of two very needy young children. She's also going through some things, and when someone breaks into her house, she finds herself confronting a strange and very unexpected situation...
I got sucked into this story right away, found myself slipping into Molly's two super exhausting worlds as easily as she did. Her job keeps her busy but she loves it. Although, a recent discovery has started causing some problems. Her homelife is hectic as she tries to balance a preschooler and a baby while her husband is away on business. She's so overwhelmed, she sometimes imagines hearing threats everywhere.
No matter what, her mind fills her with the worst kind of situations. Yet, nothing can prepare her for what she actually stumbles into. Or rather, what she's dragged into. Because her ordeal is disorienting, scary, amazing and totally surreal.
Molly's approach to motherhood is so relatable. The way she enjoys taking a break from the kids by going to work, but how at the same time she misses them with a physical intensity she finds almost impossible to deal with. It's the mental struggle of every mother, hers is just amped up several notches with a little sprinkling of the unknown, a good dose of sci-fi and a nice mix of terror.
I loved how the suspense starts from the first page and remains throughout even as we follow Molly through some very mundane daily jobs--both inside and outside the house. And when things get weird, they really go to some very weird places that make the reader question everything that's going on.
And that's the other thing I enjoyed about this book. There's a thin ambiguous line that works both as a speculative story and as the real experience of an overworked woman going through a psychological episode.
Not to mention how well the Bible story works.
Yep. This is a great book!
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