The Road Less Traveled

Quote This…

“Without my ability, I don’t know who I am” 

One of the most noteworthy aspects of the human existence (and possibly the most under appreciated) is freedom of choice (or free will for those of you more biblically inclined.) The most beautiful is the blind faith we allow ourselves to experience when making those choices.

As babies we choose when to crawl, when to walk, our first word.

As teenagers we choose our future. Will it be college? Music? Art…

As we get older we choose the details that will define our lives. Who do I love? How many children will I have? WILL I have children. Should I buy this house?

Sometimes the choice comes with an unexplainable rush of joy. Other times the result is pain or loss. But at the end of the day, WE made the choice for ourselves. It was our destiny, whether it be divinely mapped out or purely circumstantial. We made it. We committed to it. And we get to experience every beautiful/heart-wrenching lesson that comes along with that choice.

But what if you could see the result of your choices before you ever made them? What if you had the ability to make the most accurate “pros and cons” list ever. See your path for weeks or even years in advance. In the blink of an eye you could take the options set before you, take a few deep breaths, and then instantly be onslaughted with the ramifications of each choice.

Would you want to know? And if you did…do you think you could handle knowing both sides of the story?

“Knowing the outcome doesn’t always make a choice easier . . .

Addison Coleman’s life is one big “What if?” As a Searcher, whenever Addie is faced with a choice, she can look into the future and see both outcomes. It’s the ultimate insurance plan against disaster. Or so she thought. When Addie’s parents ambush her with the news of their divorce, she has to pick who she wants to live with—her father, who is leaving the paranormal compound to live among the “Norms,” or her mother, who is staying in the life Addie has always known. Addie loves her life just as it is, so her answer should be easy. One Search six weeks into the future proves it’s not. In one potential future, Addie is adjusting to life outside the Compound as the new girl in a Norm high school where she meets Trevor, a cute, sensitive artist who understands her. In the other path, Addie is being pursued by the hottest guy in school—but she never wanted to be a quarterback’s girlfriend. When Addie’s father is asked to consult on a murder in the Compound, she’s unwittingly drawn into a dangerous game that threatens everything she holds dear. With love and loss in both lives, it all comes down to which reality she’s willing to live through . . . and who she can’t live without.”

Clairvoyant is defined as: A person who claims to have a supernatural ability to perceive events in the future or beyond normal sensory contact.

In Pivot Point this person is Addison Coleman. But, unlike your everyday comic book superhero (or your crazy Aunt Cindy who swears she can predict the exact moment your love life will go to total shit…7 years in the future) Addison can only predict HER future. The only problem is…predicting her future leaves marks.

I’ll give you a fairly non-spoilery (slightly insignificant) example.

In the very beginning of “Pivot Point” Addison is asked to a dance. She is uncertain of her feelings about this particular dance (and the boy who asked her to accompany him) so she throws her choices to the wind (that’s code for she got all super-powery.) Within a few minutes her answer becomes clear. Don’t go to the dance. Why? Because the boy is a total assclown. But (and here is the kicker) since she decided to use her powers (instead of her gut instinct) she now has a permanent imprint of the choice she did NOT pick. She feels it as though she has lived it, and unless her best friend throws her a bone and erases the memory of her “other choice” she will spend the rest of her life remember that the afore-mentioned assclown tried to take advantage of her.

My thought when first presented with this conundrum was “so what.” Now you know who to avoid. No harm no foal. But as I kept reading, as I began to understand the full weight of her decisions whether “seen” or “lived” I realized that sometimes ignorance is bliss. That knowing every single detail of every possible outcome and physically attaching to both as if you REALLY LIVED them can be torturous.

Here is the thing…we aren’t meant to KNOW what happens before it actually happens. That’s just not natural. But in the case of Addison, it is incredible entertaining. To be blunt about it…it took me a few chapters to understand what was really happening, but once it clicked (because apparently I was reeeaaallly tired that day) I realized that this book had stumbled upon something brilliant. Screw dual narration as an opposing point of view. Pivot Point was more than an easy way to see both sides of the story, it WAS BOTH STORIES! Cloaked under the guise of one elegantly crafted story lay Addison and her dance through two very different, very compelling, options.

Now…I could keep going. I could wax poetic, write a haiku, or at the very least blaze a heart-shaped trail from here to Canada with my love for this book. But I won’t. Instead I’ll leave you with this.

It was great.

It was original.

I was moved by the characters and touched by the situations they had to navigate through.

And like most comic books…there was action, an evil overlord, and a touch of romance.

Otherwise knowns as a hodgepodge of awesomeness.

This book is definitely NOT a waste of a hard earned dollar.

Happy Reading my fellow Kindle-ites and remember: “There is power in self-sacrifice.” – Divergent (Veronica Roth)

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