Needy Little Things by Channelle Desamours

Welcome Back, Booklovers! It had been awhile since I read a YA contemporary but Needy Little Things was gifted to me by Wednesday Books and I needed a book that was the opposite of my usual reads after falling into a slump.

Sariyah Lee Bryant is a teenage with clairvoyant type powers. While she doesn't get visions she can hear people's needs without them voicing them. In fact she hears them so loudly she walks around with varying items to gift people to silence the voices in her head. The loud voices make it hard to concentrate and as a result she's doing badly in school. The problem is this gift doesn't work on those she's closest with. While attending a music festival with her friends one of their friends disappears. For Sariyah and her friend Malcolm this hits too close to home as Malcolm's sister was kidnapped a few years before. Now Sariyah must try and use her gift to piece together her friend's disappearance. 

This book address a number of issues from dealing with a family member with chronic illness,  depression, family separation, money troubles, and ADHD. And that was in addition to the discussion surrounding the way missing Black girls are treated. While all very necessary topics to discussion at times it felt a little piled on to one character and left little page time for her to exist outside of those issues.

The book started to loose steam towards the end as we got closer to solving the mystery. I wasn't sure what the take away message was supposed to be from this book because I felt like some events at the end undermined the overall message. It felt as if the speculative element was just added to the story to make it stand out amongst a sea of thrillers. Her gift of clairvoyance is heavily discussed and coveted by some characters. But outside of being told it was passed down through from generations we don't get much on the origin and background. Her powers were more of a nuisance to her and the story could've still been told and played out almost the exact same way without them.

One of Chanelle Desamour's strengths is her dialogue. These characters sound like real people, like real teens. Her straightforward storytelling methods made this a very smooth and easy read. But in many ways it plays it safe and doesn't fully flesh out some things.