What do you need?
NEED is a 2015 YA thriller novel by Joelle Charbonneau.
In the small town of Nottawa, Wisconsin, Kaylee Dunham is a high school student desperately trying to find a kidney donor for her sick little brother DJ, with her primary hope being to find her father who walked out on them shortly after DJ's diagnosis.
Recently during Winter break for Nottawa High School a new social media exclusive for NHS students called NEED appears. Offering to provide needed things it's users request in exchange for doing some minor tasks, but soon what's being asked of them escalates into more dangerous things and Kaylee sets to learn the more sinister purposes behind NEED.
NEED contains examples of:
- Attention Whore: Kaylee is accused of using DJ's illness and her attempts to find a kidney donor for him as a means of drawing attention to herself and gain sympathy, when in truth she's just desperate to help him.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: One of the NEED requests was to silence some dogs that are constantly barking, so NEED has Ethan brutally kill the dogs and he does so.
- Big Sister Instinct: Kaylee is very protective of DJ, going to dramatic lengths to find a donor for him, such as trying to pretending to be sick so she can look through people's medical records to see if they might be a possible match.
- Boom, Headshot!: The fate of the person behind NEED as Dr. Jain is shot in the back of the head by Sydney as he arrives.
- Bystander Syndrome: Most of Nottawa refuses to even test if they're a viable donor for DJ and are just willing let to him die because they don't want to go through with the operation themselves.
- Evil All Along: The person running NEED is Dr. Jain, using her position at the school to help her learn more the students so she can manipulate them.
- Fictional Social Network: NEED is an anonymous social network exclusive to Nottawa High School students and unlike most social networks it used for people requesting things and being given them. It is actually a government experiment designed to test out ways to acquire information from foreign nations.
- Frame-Up: The order of cookies that end up killing Amanda is left under Kaylee's name so when the police start investigating her death they believe Kaylee arranged it due to Dr. Jain making them believe she's unstable and having her name put down for it.
- Get Out!: Kaylee shouts this at Nate after she learns that he's been helping NEED all along and that he's a viable donor for DJ but is too scared to go through the operation.
- Government Conspiracy: NEED is a government experiment to test ways to gain information from foreign nations by seeing what it can get ordinary citizens to do and inadvertently reveal.
- Jerk Jock: Nate's older brother Jack is a vain jock that adores that people admire him and frequently bullies Nate.
- Manipulative Bastard: The person running NEED uses the people completing the tasks assigned to them to arrange events such as framing people for cheating on their spouses, or arranging people's deaths. This person is Dr. Jain who also uses her position as the school psychiatrist to manipulate people into thinking Kaylee is possibly dangerously unstable.
- My God, What Have I Done?: After Bryan realizes that he played a role in Amanda's death by delivering the cookies that she was allergic to, he is horrified and considers and askes NEED for a gun so he can commit suicide.
- Parental Abandonment: Kaylee and DJ's father went out for a fishing trip and never returned a few weeks after DJ diagnosed. The reason is because when he tested to see if he was possible donor for DJ he ended up learning that he wasn't actually DJ's biological father and that his wife had cheated on him.
- Psycho for Hire: Ethan is a budding one, as after he completes his first assignment for NEED he's so excited by it that askes for more with the thrill he gets from committing these crimes as it's own reward, and plans on getting a similar job with the government later.
- Psycho Psychologist: The person behind NEED is actually the school psychiatrist Dr. Jain who is causing all this as a government experiment and shows no concern about anyone who dies during this.
- Social Media Is Bad: Social media is presented as a vapid, shallow thing that allows people to hurt others without having to face consequences.
- Unwitting Pawn: Almost everyone that does something sinister for NEED does so without knowing the full consequences of what they're doing, such as playing a part in arranging Amanda to unknowingly eat cookies she's allergic to and die.
