This book made a real quick trip from not being on my radar at all to being a series where I highly anticipate the next, which is thankfully sitting on my shelf right now. What Barlow pulls off in this book is sincerely masterful, mixing YA with fantasy with horror. Quick aside here to say, I have a newfound belief that YA revolves around the age of the main character, but there are a lot of elements present in this story that might draw comparisons to an R-rated Hunger Games, or other series, type lead character. 

Pivot is the first book in Barlow’s Jack Harper trilogy. The first thing you might want to know, and the book’s back cover obliges us here, is that Jack is a girl. We first meet her at age seven, being raised in a mysterious mansion by Cyrus, a cult leader with some major league delusions of grandeur. But also some actual grandeur. Cyrus is in possession of a box that grants him both power and knowledge, part of said knowledge being that he knows who will be faithful to him and who will pivot and turn on him.

When the reader intrudes upon the story, seven year old Jack is being trained in the art of death, learning how to kill over and over again. Despite the surroundings, Jack develops a sense of humanity and even morality that drives the story forward.

One of the elements that makes this story work so well is the way it’s isolated to Jack’s point of view. What we see and what we understand about this world is all seen from inside of the mansion. Do we trust what Cyrus tells Jack or do we form our own ideas of what this wider world truly looks like?

Another thing I truly enjoyed, and am very interested to see how it works going forward, is the slow introduction of the fantastic into the story. It’s introduced early on, but only in small increments, as we go on, Barlow crescendos it, developing a lore and mythology that the readers expects to be steeped in further installments.

Pivot is about 220 pages and there’s not a boring moment. Barlow does an incredible job of crafting a self-contained first installment that stands on its own, but raises enough questions and does the work of world building to peak the reader’s interest, making us want to see what Jack’s going to get up to next. I would highly recommend for fans of coming-of-age, cult horror, and even horror that is grounded but intertwines magic and mythology into its realistic setting. Next up: Perish.


I was given a copy by the author for review consideration.