Sariyah Lee Bryant can hear what people need—tangible things, like a pencil, a hair tie, a phone charger—an ability only her family and her best friend, Malcolm, know the truth about. But when she fulfills a need for her friend Deja who vanishes shortly after, Sariyah is left wondering if her ability is more curse than gift. This isn’t the first time one of her friends has landed on the missing persons list, and she’s determined not to let her become yet another forgotten Black girl.

Not trusting the police and media to do enough on their own, Sariyah and her friends work together to figure out what led to Deja’s disappearance. When Sariyah’s mother loses her job and her little brother faces complications with his sickle cell disease, managing her time, money, and emotions seems impossible. Desperate, Sariyah decides to hustle her need-sensing ability for cash—a choice that may not only lead her to Deja, but put her in the same danger Deja found herself in.

Short and Sweet Review

Sariyah has a unique ability to hear the needs of those around her, and the only people who know about her ability are her family and her best friend Malcolm. Sariyah, Malcolm, Deja, and Jude go to a music festival, and Deja ends up going missing. Earlier that day Sariyah fulfilled a need for Deja and now that Deja is missing she’s beginning to wonder if her gift is more of a curse. Deja isn’t the only friend Sariyah and Malcolm have had gone missing a few years ago Malcolm’s sister Tessa went missing and was never found. Sariyah knows time is of the essence and she’s hoping her gift can lead her to Deja.

This book started off great but then as it progressed I started to become annoyed with the characters and by the end I was furious but first I’ll start off with the good. I thought Sariyah’s ability was interesting, she could hear the needs of those around her like if they needed a pencil, a hair tie, maybe a hat, that kind of thing but it did take a toll on her if she wasn’t able to fulfill someones need. There were different things that were brought up that were important like mental health being discussed, sickle cell disease, and unfortunately how when people of color go missing there isn’t a big hurry to find them. That’s about all I liked so let’s get into the bad. When Deja goes missing, Malcolm and Sariyah get into arguments and they have the worst attitudes with each other and it was awful and Sariyah our main character would have this nasty attitude with not only Malcolm but other characters in this book more often than not, obviously having someone close to you go missing is scary but them arguing wasn’t helping. Sariyah has a romantic interest named Jude and she wasn’t great to him either, I felt bad for him that he had to deal with her, she suspected him of being guilty and then she got made at him because his aunt got a job. Later on we see Sariyah’s mom in a depression which means Sariyah has to take care of her younger brother JoJo and she decides to use her gift to make money which ends up attracting people who are dangerous. We also meet some side characters who live in a different town and they’re important but learning about their stories started to muddle things going on. Finally as important as it is to bring awareness to people going missing especially those that are minorities some of the characters went about it the wrong way, and this is where the author lost me because after finding out what happened I was seeing RED, I was ticked. If I was in this book I wouldn’t be protecting anyone and those characters would either get repercussions for their actions or never hear from me again, well they probably wouldn’t hear from me if they weren’t punished. I don’t want to ruin anything so I’ll just say I hated the ending and I feel like it ruined this book.

Overall, I liked the premise, Sariyah being able to tell what people need and trying to make sure Deja wasn’t another statistic, but the ending is something I won’t get over and will be ranting about for a long time and not in a good way. If you want to read this book, I will admit it started out great for me and ended horribly but others could think the ending is genius, so with that said to each their own.