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Summary
Summary
Theo is better now.
She's eating again, dating guys who are almost appropriate, and well on her way to becoming an elite ballet dancer. But when her oldest friend, Donovan, returns home after spending four long years with his kidnapper, Theo starts reliving memories about his abduction-and his abductor.
Donovan isn't talking about what happened, and even though Theo knows she didn't do anything wrong, telling the truth would put everything she's been living for at risk. But keeping quiet might be worse.
Brandy Colbert dazzles in this heartbreaking yet hopeful debut novel about learning how to let go of even our most shameful secrets.
Author Notes
Brandy Colbert was born and raised in Springfield, Missouri, and has worked as an editor for several national magazines. She lives and writes in Los Angeles. Pointe is her first novel.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Theo Cartwright, from one of the few black families in a predominantly white Chicago suburb, lives for ballet, and she's destined for stardom on stage. When her childhood best friend Donovan-who disappeared four years earlier at age 13-resurfaces, Theo's life is upended. Debut novelist Colbert has written an extraordinary book about dance, seamlessly intertwined with the chilling aftermath of a kidnapping. In honest, confident prose, Colbert builds characters whose flaws, struggles, and bad decisions make them real and indelibly memorable. Theo may be a gifted and driven dancer, but she's also still a 17-year-old who can shut down a smug classmate with an acid remark, drinks and smokes with her friends, became sexually involved with an older guy at 13 (and never really thought of it as rape), is keeping an eating disorder in check, and carries heavy secrets about her connection to Donovan's disappearance. Colbert gives all her characters similar depth (including the pianist/school drug dealer Theo is drawn to, even though he has a girlfriend), and it's this complexity and empathy that set this gripping story apart. Ages 14-up. Agent: Tina Wexler, ICM. (Apr.)? (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
As this suspenseful, absorbing novel opens, seventeen-year-old Theo Cartwright's best friend Donovan (one of the few other black students in her school) has been missing for four years -- long enough for Theo to have made new friends, reached a decisive moment in her serious ballet training, and recovered from the downward spiral of grief and anorexia catalyzed by Donovan's disappearance and her abandonment by older boyfriend Trent. When Donovan is found and the identity of the kidnapper is made public, Theo realizes that the kidnapper, thirty-year-old Chris Fenner, is Trent. As she agonizes over whether to tell anyone (and Donovan refuses to talk at all), Theo's first-person narration reveals both disturbing details of her time with Trent and her current conflicting feelings of guilt and jealousy: "Either Donovan ran away with my boyfriend...or I was charmed by the scum of the fucking earth." Readers will realize long before Theo does that despite her feelings for Trent, she too has been victimized. Meanwhile, an intense but illicit relationship with manipulative Hosea proves Theo still has a lot of healing to do. Can she find the strength to speak up for Donovan and herself? Through her unreliable -- but, as Theo herself ultimately comes to recognize, blameless -- narrator, Colbert confronts wrenching, often unacknowledged aspects of sexual abuse: a survivor's self-destructive shame, fear of revealing the abuse, and emotional attachment to her abuser. katie bircher (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
Colbert's strong debut believably portrays self-delusion through a first-person voice readers will see the protagonist's every mistake but also understand why she made them. Theo, 17, is heading toward the Summer Intensive auditions that should fast-track her ballet career. But that goal dovetails with a surprise: the return of former best friend Donovan, who disappeared four years ago. It is revealed that Donovan had been abducted by a man twice his age Chris, who'd had an intense sexual relationship with Theo when she was 13. He's a pedophile, though that word doesn't appear until late in the novel. Theo's love for Chris had seemed real, just as it does now for pot-smoking pianist Hosea. The central moral dilemma should she risk damaging her ballet career by coming clean about her relationship with Chris at his trial? is an effective one, though the book's meat and potatoes is Theo's struggle with love, lust, and loyalty. This is the latest in a bold new crop of gutsy, messy debuts, including Carrie Mesrobian's Sex & Violence (2013) and Stephanie Kuehn's Charm & Strange (2013).--Kraus, Daniel Copyright 2014 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-Theo, 17, is determined to become one of the few African American professional ballet dancers. While she's preparing for a high-stakes audition, flirting with a new crush (a talented pianist who also happens to be the local pot dealer), and recovering from a bout of anorexia, she learns that her best friend, Donovan, who went missing four years earlier, has suddenly returned. Donovan's kidnapper was Theo's former boyfriend, an adult who lied about his age to the then-13-year-old dancer. Theo thought what she and Trent (aka Chris) had was love, but she gradually realizes that it was actually something more sinister. Debut author Colbert bravely chooses realistic, if not necessarily happy resolutions to some subplots: Theo's decision to testify against Chris forces her to put her ballet career on hold, and what looks like a promising new romance turns unexpectedly sour. However, the abundance of high-interest motifs and devices (an unreliable narrator, statutory rape, kidnapping, eating disorders, and hints of the elite world of ballet) sometimes overloads the story, and the connections among them often feel forced. Libraries where All the Truth That's in Me by Julie Berry (Viking, 2013), Bunheads by Sophie Flack (Little, Brown, 2011), and Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson (Viking, 2009) are popular will want to consider this title, as will those seeking to enhance their collection of books by and about strong African American women.-Jill Ratzan, I. L. Peretz Community Jewish School, Somerset, NJ (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Against the backdrop of an intriguingly dark suburban Chicago, a teen dancer struggles with her past. Seventeen-year-old Theo Cartwright has a passion for ballet and a penchant for falling for the wrong guy. She also has a tendency to starve herself when reality feels beyond her control, and unfortunately for Theo, life has dealt her more than her fair share of blows. Theo appears to be on relatively sure footing now. She's eating. She's supported by two fiercely loyal best friends and by her loving parents. And her dream of becoming an elite dancer is on the brink of coming true. Yet when her best friend, Donovan, suddenly returns four years after disappearing, Theo is forced to confront old demons. It's an intriguing premise, and debut author Colbert does a commendable job creating authentic teen characters that readers will recognize from the halls of their own high schools. Unfortunately, while there is enough here to entertain, the story never reaches its full potential. References to Theo's struggles with anorexia are surprisingly and disappointingly lacking in emotion. Ditto for her relationship with Donovan. Theo's a textbook anorexic, almost to the point of clich, but never are readers given the opportunity to feel her desperation. And while there are flashbacks aplenty, there are surprisingly few that shed light on the deep connection Theo and Donovan presumably once shared. This is a novel that ultimately misses thepoint. (Fiction. 14-18)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
