Needy Little Things: The new YA thriller with a twist that will leave you speechless

By Author / Illustrator

Channelle Desamours

Genre

Suspense & Thrillers

Age range(s)

14+

Publisher

Bloomsbury YA

ISBN

9781526675064

Format

Paperback / softback

Published

13-02-2025

Synopsis

A brilliantly page-turning thriller with an unusual psychological twist, which fans of One of Us is Lying, Ace of Spades and A Good Girl's Guide to Murder will love.

Sariyah is determined not to let her missing friend become just another statistic, one of many vanished Black girls. But despite her talent for ESP, Sariyah is struggling, even when the clues point surprisingly close to home.

When Sariyah's birthday celebrations at a music festival turn sour with the disappearance of one of her friends, she knows she can't rely on the police to find her. The authorities are no more help than they were when her friend's twin sister, another young woman of colour, went missing five years earlier. Sariyah feels guilty that her uncanny ability to predict people's needs didn't help to keep her friends safe. She is determined to find out what's happened to Deja. But the more she cracks the clues leading to her, the closer she gets to home ...

'An unputdownable mystery centering a missing Black girl and the relentless search of friends who won't give up on her. [...] Needy Little Things is a triumphant debut.' Jessica Lewis, author of Bad Witch Burning

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Reviews

Rachel

What starts out as a story about a teenage girl who has a gift for knowing what people need (think pepper spray, tissues or chewing gum) quickly evolves into something much darker and more serious.

Sariyah's friend Deja goes missing at a festival. She is not the first black girl to do so and along with the grief Sariyah feels, is anger that when a white girl disappeared, society paid more attention. Sariyah and best friend Malcom use social media to try to find Deja and along the way get sucked into a world of distrust, half-truths and fear.

I found this to be a very interesting novel. It's set in America and explores the themes of parental mental health, young adult relationships and, interestingly for me, sickle cell disease. The idea of Sariyah instinctively knowing what people need in the moment is a bit quirky and shouldn't work, set against the other more significant issues, but it does!

Needy Little Things has a gripping plot with the ending being both unexpected and heart-stopping. There is much to consider by the time this has been read. Fans of Angie Thomas and followers of the Black Lives Matter movement will see this book as a useful addition to a conversation that needs to be kept going.

384 pages / Reviewed by Rachel Bolton