Review: Fracture by Megan Miranda ~ ***The Starry-Eyed Revue***

Title: Fracture
Author: Megan Miranda
Series: n/a
Publisher: Walker & Company
Publication Date: January 17, 2012
Source: Netgalley
Links: Amazon | Goodreads
Rating:

From Goodreads:

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?

For fans of best-sellers like Before I Fall and If I Stay, this is a fascinating and heart-rending story about love and friendship and the fine line between life and death.

Review:

This story was so unexpected and surprising. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that I almost didn’t even give it a try. I passed it up several times on Netgalley because I was afraid it would be too contemporary for my taste. I’m glad I did eventually read it, though, because it’s now going on my favorites shelf. Seriously…it’s not very often that I’m left completely satisfied at the end of a novel. And it appears that this is a stand-alone…bonus points for that.

The entire time I was reading this story, I kept thinking to myself, she could be writing about me. The mistakes, the heartbreak, even the academic aspect felt all-too familiar to me. At least, the teenage version of me. And yet, the story was unpredictable. It doesn’t skip a beat getting right to the action, and though it’s not explosive action, there’s never a lull in the storyline. When I wasn’t reading the book, I was thinking about it, and I stayed up way past my bedtime trying to find a good place to stop for the night. (There’s not one…I suggest you read it straight through if you can.)

Fracture is reminiscent of Kimberly Derting’s The Body Finder series, except instead of being lured by the imprints of dead bodies as Violet is, Delaney seems to be drawn to those who are on the brink of death. Even the best friend/potential boyfriend angle is similar, but it’s handled so differently in Fracture that that’s where the similarity ends.

The characters were very realistic, as were the character interactions. I never once thought, A real teenager wouldn’t say that. Delaney was impulsive and stubborn and afraid of being hurt, just like any other girl. Her relationship with her best friend Decker was strained after the accident because everything had changed, and he was harboring some serious guilt. Her parents treated her like she was someone else, someone they didn’t know. And yet Delaney persevered, threw herself into her studies to try to get back to normal. Enter Troy. Like matters weren’t complicated enough.

If the story itself wasn’t perfectly orchestrated, that ending sure was. Wow. I’m not one to be easily surprised either. I’ve been reading for a long time, and I’ve come to expect certain things from the writing in this genre, and most of the time, those expectations are met, be that good or bad. But with this novel, I can honestly say I did not see that ending coming. Actually, I didn’t see a lot of what was coming in this story. I know many are raving about this book, and I have to agree…this is definitely one book not to miss!

After reading Fracture, check it out on Facebook to read a short story told from Decker's POV from the eleven minutes Delaney was under the ice to when she wakes up, six days later. Your only payment is a tweet or a Facebook share. Enjoy!