Emily May's Reviews > Pivot Point

3.5 stars
This book was exactly what I needed to read right now. After a series of books focusing on the depressing, the gory, the serious and various roads leading to the apocalypse, Pivot Point is a refreshingly bright novel brimming with fun. From the light-hearted and hilarious dialogue between the characters, to the sheer likeability of the protagonist - Addie - who doesn't bog down the novel with melodrama and angst but leads us through a story that is completely enjoyable and practically unputdownable. I've always been a fan of a good dark tale of mystery and angst but there are sometimes when I require a read which is made up of mostly laughs, fluff and fun fun fun! But this book isn't without some heartbreak, especially towards the end, and yet I think it's all the more meaningful because the rest of the book isn't a drama-fest.

In Pivot Point, there are people secretly living amongst us with special abilities. These abilities range from lie-detecting skills to full mind-reading to precognition. Addie falls into this latter category... sort of. When faced with a specific choice, she can "search" the future and find out what her life would look like on each path and make a decision based on this. Sounds awesome! Who could ever make a wrong decision with that ability, right? But, of course, things are not quite so simple.

When Addie's parents announce that they are getting a divorce, they want Addie to decide whether to stay with her mother in the Compound where people with supernatural abilities (including her best friend) live, or to move to Dallas, Texas with her father and live amongst normal people. Addie searches each possible future to decide which outcome will be most beneficial - and discovers that her decision will not be quite as simple as she'd imagined. Two different lives, two different parents, two different boys. And while my initial reaction to yet another YA love triangle was to roll my eyes, I really do think this is quite a unique approach to it and I finished the book with every intention of picking up the sequel.

I also really liked the choice of supernatural element in this book because it opened the story up for a wider range of character-types and an exploration into how they deal with their individual abilities. Vampires are just fine but they all tend to play by the same set of rules, whereas in Pivot Point, each of them faces a very different set of challenges that comes along with being who they are. One thing that was touched upon - and I'd like to read even more about - is Addie's relationship with her parents and the way their abilities affect her. Her mother can influence people to do what she wants and her father can tell if someone is lying - so, as she confesses at one point, she does what her mother says and never lies to her father because she doesn't want them to use their abilities on her.

My only major criticism of this book is Laila, who I think behaves in a very questionable way sometimes and makes a pretty awful best friend. Who pushes their friend off a stage to make them stumble into a guy she wants them to be with? I'm willing to somewhat overlook this because the author has introduced us to some of Laila's background and I know she's had a hard time - I think with some more character development in the upcoming books we will be able to understand Laila better. And no one likes a faultless character, anyway.

Pivot Point, on the whole, is a great debut and a very fun book. If you like your sci-fi light and laugh-out-loud funny, this should be an instant favourite.