Review: Fracture (Fracture #1) by Megan Miranda

Fracture (Fracture #1) by Megan Miranda

Publication Date: January 17, 2012
Page Count: 262
Published by: Walker Childrens

Synopsis 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. 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.

My Thoughts:

As I started reading Fracture I was immediately drawn into the story. It was a fascinating beginning and I wanted to know how Delaney survived being underwater for 11 minutes. Despite scans showing obvious brain damage, Delaney seems fine until she starts having an odd itching sensation in her brain and finds herself drawn towards dying people.

Delaney, knowing that something is terribly wrong with her, feels that she is alone and has no one to talk to. Along comes Troy, a boy who was also in a coma, and seems to understand Delaney the way no one else does. Even though it's obvious that Troy has a (very) dark side, I enjoyed his character. His moral compass was way off, but he seemed oblivious to this. The more Delaney and the readers got to know him, the more dark and sinister he became.

Delaney's best friend/boy next door Decker was with her when she fell through the ice. He feels extremely guilty that he was the one that led her onto the ice and that he wasn't able to save her quicker. It's rather obvious that he and Delaney like each other, and have for a long time, though neither wants to be the first to put it all out there. This tension leads to misunderstandings and hurtful actions by both Delaney and Decker.

The secondary characters in the story are underdeveloped and stereotypical. Delaney's parents are obsessed with being overprotective. And her circle of 'friends' were the cliche teen/high school characters, and they only added drama where it really was not needed.

The premise of Fracture was original and intriguing and slightly paranormal. It was very easy to submerse myself into the storyline and I felt that the writing flowed well. The book had a strong beginning, but then it started to falter. I was quite disappointed that the future implications of Delaney's ability are not addressed. Other elements throughout the story are not clarified or resolved. I ended up being unsatisfied with the ending since it felt a little rushed and was not much of a conclusion.

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars