Just Finished Reading ... Pivot Point by Kasie West

Happy Valentine's Day!  Sending all of you virtual chocolate.

First off, I wanted to remind you that I have two amazing giveaways going on that offer you a chance to win some of my favorite romantic books. Just click on the description to enter!

Romance is In the Air giveaway ends tonight at midnight! Win either Indigo Spell by Richelle Mead or Such a Rush by Jennifer Echols.

For the Love of Swoon  -- enter to win Unravel Me by Tahereh Mafi, Scarlet by Marissa Meyer, or Crash/Clash by Nicole Williams.

These two are US only, but if you are international, do not despair. You can enter my Hot Off the Presses giveaway!

Now, let's get to:

Pivot Point
by Kasie West
Published by Harper Teen
on February 12, 2012

Source: eARC from the publisher via Edelweiss. My FTC disclosure is in the right sidebar.

Connect with the author on her: blog : Twitter




My summary: Addison "Addie" Coleman lives in the Compound, a community designed for people with special paranormal abilities. Addie's mom is a Persuader. Her dad, a Discerner, is a human lie detector. Her best friend Laila can delete unwanted memories. Officially, Addie is a Clairvoyant, but her power is even more specific than that. Addie can look into the future and see the possible outcomes of a decision. When Addie's parents announce they're splitting up and tell her that she can either live with her mother or her father, Addie looks ahead to see the implications of both decisions. They're huge: she'll have to choose whether to follow a path of heartbreak for herself, or to save a life.

My take: Pivot Point is an intriguing and well-crafted story that's half paranormal romance, half science fiction/parallel universe story. Addie lives in a community of people with paranormal abilities, and her ability allows her to explore the outcome of different choices. If you've studied quantum mechanics or seen the movie Sliding Doors, or the TV series Sliders, you'll understand what I mean.

When Addie's parents split up, they ask her to decide if she wants to remain in the Compound with her mom or head into the real world with her dad. So she decides to mentally flash forward six weeks and see what would happen in each scenario.

Addie's "normal" and "paranormal" choice paths are described in alternating chapters, which threw me a little at first. Then I decided that it made more sense that way. I was rarely confused as to which path she was on until she ended up outside the Compound in both. The author does help out with clever chapter headings.

I was also taken aback by the fact that, in each possible reality, Addie cozies up to an attractive football player. Since Addie has no interest in sports, I wondered why we couldn't have some nice musician or scientist as one of her love interests. But soon -- head smack! --I figured out that her two realities were going to converge. Awesome! Waiting for that to happen was by far my favorite part of the book, and I waited breathlessly to see what would transpire.

A few other elements of the book -- mean cheerleader Stephanie and Addie's sassy best friend Laila -- felt very familiar. There's also a subplot about a guy murdering teenage girls, and I had figured out pretty quickly how both that and Laila's abilities were going to play into the plot. But that didn't spoil my enjoyment in the slightest.

Pivot Point was a fun and moving read that definitely had a few surprises up its sleeve. Watching Addie choose her path was tough. But ... did that means that the other path she didn't choose never really happened? I'm a little iffy on this quantum mechanics stuff. I'll have to wait for book two in this series to see how it all pans out.  I'd definitely recommend Pivot Point to fans of paranormal romance and those who love science fiction.