Fracture by Megan Mirandapublisher: Walker Books for Young Readers
release date: January 17th, 2012hardcover, 264 pagesintended audience: Young adultrating:
source: Netgalley
description:
Eleven minutes passed before Delaney Maxwell was pulled from the icy waters of a Maine lake by her best friend Decker Phillips. By then her heart had stopped beating. Her brain had stopped working. She was dead. And yet she somehow defied medical precedent to come back seemingly fine
—despite the scans that showed significant brain damage. Everyone wants Delaney to be all right, but she knows she's far from normal. Pulled by strange sensations she can't control or explain, Delaney finds herself drawn to the dying. Is her altered brain now predicting death, or causing it?
Then Delaney meets Troy Varga, who recently emerged from a coma with similar abilities. At first she's reassured to find someone who understands the strangeness of her new existence, but Delaney soon discovers that Troy's motives aren't quite what she thought. Is their gift a miracle, a freak of nature-or something much more frightening? Review: In
Fracture, debut author Megan Miranda gives us a story that thrills, mystifies, and has us asking ourselves some hard questions. After falling through the ice, Delaney miraculously wakes up from a coma when no one had much hope that she would survive. While she should have been dead, or at least completely brain damaged, she shows no signs of any problems at all. Until she discovers she has the eerie ability of being drawn to those who are about to die.
So what would you do with an ability like this? Do you try to stop it from happening? Do you help them die peacefully? Do you tell them so they can do that one last thing they've always wanted to do before they die, but keep putting off? One day she meets a strange boy with the same ability and his own ideas of what to do with them.
I really enjoyed this story---it was an exciting, tightly written story with great characters that were realistic and relatable. Delaney's group is a mixed bag of personalities, and how their relationship changes after Delaney's falls through the ice seemed natural. Her parents are also a big part of the story, especially her mother, and we do get a little taste of her backstory as well.
The love story was great, but not really at the forefront of the story. Delaney and Decker have been best friends for years and years. It's glaringly obvious that there is way more going on there, but both are too scared to risk their friendship by going for it. This is one of my favorite kinds of love story---cliched as it may be, it's a cliche for a reason: because it really happens. I love all the history, the anticipation, the awkwardness, the doubt...all the crazy intense emotion that goes along with that kind of relationship. To those who might shy away from this for fear of love triangles: I'd say give it a shot. In all honesty, Troy was never a viable love interest. There is just something off and creepy about him from the start. While I understood Delaney's draw to him as someone who knew what she was going through and could provide a few answers, it kind of irked me that she blew off some very blatant warning signs about him. So for me, it was all about Decker. :)
I also loved the whole medical aspect. I've always been fascinated with the mysteries of how the brain works, there is so much that seems unexplainable, so while this gets touted as a paranormal story, something traumatic happening to the brain that lets you sense things your normally wouldn't doesn't seem that far-fetched to me! Plus I love the sort of moral inner battle Delaney faces with her new ability. It made for an incredibly fascinating story!
Highly recommend this one!!
Visit Megan Miranda's site
here.
Purchase Fracture at:
Amazon •
BN.com •
BookDepository •
Indiebound
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