Imagine being born with a genetic condition that means you need human flesh to survive. You cannot outrun it, cure it, or simply decide you want to be normal. It is part of you, and in The Need, Megan Mostyn-Brown takes that horrifying premise and turns it into something surprisingly layered, darkly funny and completely addictive. Talia has spent years trying to protect her children and keep The Need hidden, while the wealthy Armstrong family has embraced it as part of their bloodline, treating their supposedly perfect genetic legacy as something worth protecting at any cost. Money, power, control and family secrets collide when these worlds intersect, and what follows is a deliciously dysfunctional fight over who gets to define family, who gets to belong and what happens when that carefully protected lineage is threatened.
I am a sucker for a debut author, and Megan Mostyn-Brown absolutely delivered for me. The Need is fast, bizarre, gory, emotionally complicated and just the right amount of unhinged. I especially loved the multiple POV's because every character had a distinct voice, and moving between a teenager, a mother and an increasingly unhinged grandmother was perfect. What really grabbed me, though, was the way horror is wrapped around questions of inheritance, identity, motherhood and the pressure to live up to something you never asked to inherit. The Armstrong's see The Need as a legacy and their bloodline as something approaching perfection, while others are left questioning what that legacy actually costs. And let me tell you, this family drama is off the rails. Somehow, with all the blood, secrets and cannibalism, cannibalism isn't even the messiest part. Megan Mostyn-Brown has given us one hell of a confident entrance with this bingeable, outrageous, disturbing and completely different cannibal story and I cannot wait to see what she does next!
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