Why Nerve is the Unofficial Sequel to Need

**Warning: This review may contain mild spoilers for Need by Joelle Charbonneau and Nerve by Jeanne Ryan.**

As you may or may not have read in red up there, this review may contain mild spoilers. There will be no major plot points of either book. So, let’s get right into it.

So, when I read Need by Joelle Charbonneau, I really enjoyed it. It showed a darker side to social media and humanity. Last summer, I read Nerve by Jeanne Ryan, which I also really enjoyed. And, after I read both books, I came up with a kind-of-plausible-but-totally-makes-sense- theory.

In Need, there is a social media site ironically called NEED. NEED lets you make a request for what you need, and requires you to do something in return to get it. These requirements are like dares. And I’m not going to go into what goes on after that.

In Nerve, you can be a Watcher or a Player. Players do certain dares and get them video taped. They send them to NERVE and get prizes for them. As the dares get worse or more difficult, the prizes get better. The Watchers follow around the Players to videotape them and watch them.

Sound familiar at all? Well, if you think about it, NEED and NERVE have very similar concepts. They both rely on the basis of dares to get prizes. So, what if NERVE is an evolved version of NEED?

Ironic clues include that both author’s names start with J and both books start with N. But, for real, they are very similar. They reason I’m saying NEED to NERVE is because we see NEED come about in Need, but NERVE is already pre-existing at the beginning of the book. Also, NERVE seems a bit more futuristic. And

, maybe considered spoilers but very vague, the end of Need has many ways it could go in a sequel, if ever announced. If give

n like ten to fifteen years, NEED could evolve into NERVE. (*spoilers) It could be a company going from a small social media site in the-middle-of-nowhere, USA, to a global gameshow corporation. From a business standpoint, that would be a good expansion of NEED. And, who said NEED disappears? It could just offshoot into NERVE.

Whether my totally-awesome-and-completely-correct theory is correct or not, I still recommend reading Need then Nerve. And, just a warning for Nerve, it is a very grown up book. It’s still YA, but more a late teenager book.

Thank you guys for reading and I hope you enjoyed. And until next time, may the force be with you.