Completely unexpected. That's the first thing that came to mind as I finished reading Pointe. I mean sure I expected it to be good or I wouldn't have wanted to read it. But what I didn't expect was the grittiness of the story, the emotion of the book and the growth that happened. Based off the description I expected a story about a kidnapping, a secret that was probably something minor, and a lost friendship. Trust me when I tell you that Pointe was a whole lot more than that. 
 Pointe is about 17 year old Theo, a ballet dancer that has just gotten her life back together. After the disappearance of her friend 4 years before things started to get out of control and Theo stopped eating. She felt everything was out of her hands and food was the one thing she could control. But 4 years later and she is better. She is back to ballet dancing, out of the group facility she was living in, and back to eating as she should. Things are looking good and she just may get into a professional ballet company when all is said and done. And then everything changes. Donovan, her best friend that went missing, comes back. But he doesn't come back alone. He comes back with a secret that Theo has kept for 4 years, a secret that could ruin everything she has worked so hard for. Now she has to decide what really matters to her and if her secret is worth telling. 
 I liked Theo a lot and I pitied her. She had such low self-worth that my heart went out to her. I couldn't understand where this characteristic came from as she had a loving family, great friends and a future, but I also understood because she was a teenage girl that second guessed everything and wasn't comfortable in her own skin. I guess that is what I liked about her the most because it felt real. And real Theo was. She had body issues and drank and smoked pot and had crushes on guys she shouldn't have. She was basically a messed up girl that you wanted to see how much more she was. She really made this story what it was. She made Pointe real and not some washed down version of what it could have been. 
 I did have a lot of trouble with the relationship between Theo and Hosea. That was the one part that I wasn't all that into because I really liked Hosea in the beginning. He was this person that was so great for Theo and her self-esteem and then he wasn't. Without giving anything away I found him, when all was said and done, to be using her. Not intentionally and not because he didn't genuinely like her, but because he was scared to take a chance and step out of the box of his normal life. What was a nice friendship and possible relationship went down the drain for me at the end because of a decisions he made. To me he ended up being yet another person that wanted something from Theo and that took it. 
 I could say more since there was a lot of layers to this book. But I'm not going to as I don't want to give anything away. Theo's secret was not something I expected and it changed the story. It changed what could have been an okay book to a really great book. It made Theo who she was at the end and made Pointe into the gritty, real book it was and the book I think you should definitely read.