Friday, March 14, 2014

Review: Split Second

Split Second
Author: Kasie West
Published: February 11, 2014
Hardcover, 360 pages
5 Gold Stars

(summary from Goodreads)

Life can change in a split second.

Addie hardly recognizes her life since her parents divorced. Her boyfriend used her. Her best friend betrayed her. She can’t believe this is the future she chose. On top of that, her ability is acting up. She’s always been able to Search the future when presented with a choice. Now she can manipulate and slow down time, too . . . but not without a price.

When Addie’s dad invites her to spend her winter break with him, she jumps at the chance to escape into the Norm world of Dallas, Texas. There she meets the handsome and achingly familiar Trevor. He’s a virtual stranger to her, so why does her heart do a funny flip every time she sees him? But after witnessing secrets that were supposed to stay hidden, Trevor quickly seems more suspicious of Addie than interested in her. And she has an inexplicable desire to change that.

Meanwhile, her best friend, Laila, has a secret of her own: she can restore Addie’s memories . . . once she learns how. But there are powerful people who don’t want to see this happen. Desperate, Laila tries to manipulate Connor, a brooding bad boy from school—but he seems to be the only boy in the Compound immune to her charms. And the only one who can help her.

As Addie and Laila frantically attempt to retrieve the lost memories, Addie must piece together a world she thought she knew before she loses the love she nearly forgot . . . and a future that could change everything.


The Pivot Point world blows me away. I love how easily West created these normal people with extraordinary talents. There is so much more to this world that I have yet to discover (and hopefully will be able to with more books!) and I would love to dive right back into this book. Pivot Point introduced us to Addie, a girl with the remarkable ability to see into two separate futures and decide which one to take. The book follows her through both futures, one where she is living in the compound with others like her, and another where she is the normal world falling for a normal guy. But when the unthinkable happens in one future, Addie is forced to pick the other one and erase all memories of the one she wished she could keep. Split Second starts where that one left off, Addie living in the compound with no memory of Trevor, the man she fell for in the norm world. So when she goes to the norm world for winter break and meets Trevor again, she can't help but feel like she knows him and is drawn to him quickly again. Her best friend, Laila, is the one who erased Addie's memories from her trip and after reading a note that Addie wrote her in the non-future, she knows she has the power to restore Addie's memories, she just has to figure out how. She enlists the help of Conner, a guy who has ways of getting ability enhancements. As Addie gets to know Trevor more and Laila learns to control her ability, the two girls discover new things about their lives, love, and the power they have over both.

Told from both Addie and Laila's perspectives, we finally get to learn more about what makes these girls great. We met Laila in the first book, but we didn't get inside her head. She struggles just as much as Addie does while also trying to overcome the complications of living in the compound. Addie falls into a new life in the norm world, remembering nothing of being there the first time. It was interesting knowing what I know from Pivot Point, knowing everything that Addie discovered but now knows nothing about. The dramatic irony was riveting and I couldn't wait to find out if Addie would fall for Trevor again, if Laila would be able to restore her memories. I know there are no more books in this series, but I wish there were. I wish I could learn more about these girls, what else happens in the compound after the events of this book and how their relationships will change. This could easily be a longer series and I would read anything that West wants to write. Both Addie and Laila are easy to identify with in different ways. Laila's home life is messed up and she will do anything for her brother. Addie's parents just got divorced so she is learning to live a new way, one in the compound and one in the norm world. I mostly love that the girls needed to learn about the norm world because it's so different from the compound. This series is a breath of fresh air from the other super power books. Each ability is mental, but the abilities are not the most important thing in this book. It's about living with who you are, finding out what you're really capable of and I love reading stories like this.

West has shown such talent in her writing. I fell in love with Pivot Point off the bat and read The Distance Between Us and fell even harder. Split Second solidified her spot in my top favourite authors and I'm excited to see what else she has in store for us, excited to see what else she can do and what other novels I can fall in love with. Addie and Trevor are so perfect together and Laila and Connor made my heart beat faster. This was a fantastic series and I wish it never had to end.

“Once Addie let someone in, she was impossible to forget. There was something about her that crawled inside a person and built a nice comfy home there, her goodness expanding until it filled every limb.” 

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