Natalie Barletta – Opinions Editor
Dystopian fiction is currently the ‘it’ thing in popular literature. Authors like Veronica Roth, Suzanne Collins and George Orwell have all done it and have been successful with it. However, for those who have read all of Katniss’ adventures, cried over Tris’ death, and are craving another novel with the similar mechanics as those books have no fear. There’s a new book in town called ‘Pivot Point’ by Kasie West.
‘Pivot Point’ is about teenager Addie whose parents give her a difficult choice. They first spring the news of their upcoming divorce, and then ask her to pick which parent that she wants to live with. She can either stay with her mother in the world that she has always known, called the Compound, or go with her father to the normal world. You must be wondering what the normal word is and why is the choice so difficult without the divorced parents thing?
Addie is considered to be one of the ‘mentally advanced.’ In their world, otherwise known as the Compound, everything is way more advanced than the normal world. Print books have become artifacts of the past, and there wasn’t such a thing as door knobs. (Both of these things I found shocking.) The people in her high school have many abilities from being able to tell the future, to being able to move things with solely your mind. Therefore, by choosing one parent or the other, she is essentially choosing which lifestyle to live in addition to having to give up using her abilities.
Addie’s ability is to be able to tell her own future. So, she decides to look into each of her choices’ future and discovers dangerous results in both futures. In one future, she stays with her mom and dates the football star. The other choice gets her face to face with her true love. The choice is difficult. How will she choose?
I thought that the book was really well written. I’ve read fantasy novels such as ‘Harry Potter’ and read the ‘Hunger Games’ before it was associated with Jennifer Lawrence.
I’ve been there and done that with the whole dystopian fiction thing. However, with a topic that is constantly showing up in popular literature nowadays, I still found this novel to be fresh and irresistible. From the first page on, I really could not put it down. I found myself engrossed with this novel to the very last page. And even then, I still wanted more. Luckily, there is a sequel that was just recently released.
The way that West tells this story is so different than anything that I have ever read. Although it did have a love story theme in it, as most popular fiction novels do, I thought that it didn’t take away from the main focus of the story. In addition to that, there was also aspects of action and mystery. There were many different layers to each of the characters. You really had to dig deep to get their internal struggles and intentions.
Overall, I recommend this book. I really found myself binge-reading it and I was done reading it in about a week. If you like books such as ‘The Hunger Games’ or ‘Divergent’ then you would fall head over heels in love with ‘Pivot Point’ and it’s sequel ‘Split Second.’ I have yet to read ‘Split Second’ but once I get the chance to, I definitely will since I really want to know what happens next. The best part about ‘Pivot Point’? It’s located in the Juvenile Section at our very own Buley Library.
Photo Credit: Natalie Barletta
