Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Fracture by Megan Miranda

Title: Fracture
Author: Megan Miranda
Pages: 262
Publisher: Walker Childrens
My rating: 3.5 stars
Goodreads rating: 3.82 stars
Published: January 17, 2012

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. 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?


While this was a really good book {and a quick read at less than 300 pages}, I'm not a big contemporary fiction reader.  And, while this had the elements of a fantasy {a brain injury that make it so the heroine can sense when people are dying}, everything else was contemporary.  Also, it was a bit more MG than YA, and I think that might have been a drawback for me.  That being said, yes I did enjoy this book.

Megan Miranda made the character of Delaney very "girl next door".  She is the kind of girl I would have liked to read about when I was 15 or 16.  She has a boy who's her best friend {who she wishes was more, but is slightly confused about that}, and my inner teenager was saying "ugh, I know what you mean!  I've been there!"  She's so incredibly average, other than her ability to sense death, but that makes her so incredibly likeable as well.  She's not skinny, gorgeous, popular {only some, and by association}.  She's brainy {lost out to a friend for the honor of class valedictorian purely because she was in a coma and missed just enough school to put her a little behind}.  She refers to her hair as her "one good feature", and is thrilled that they didn't have to shave it off because of her injury {so typical teenager}.  Everything makes her so relate-able, which I think is a good thing for younger readers.

I like how the Megan Miranda had everything unfold between Delaney and her best friend, Decker.  It wasn't "oh, so happy, we love each other!"  There were fights, periods of silence, glares, disapprovals... everything that you would see in a real relationship for teenagers.  Decker was pretty well written coming from a woman's POV.  You could see all the things that would bother a girl who secretly liked him, but at the same time see why he would think and act the way he does.  And he really does grow on you more and more.

Enter Troy.  Why is it there always seems to be some kind of love triangle in books?  Is it really just not that interesting to see the guy chase the girl or vice versa?  {Okay, okay, stop yelling "NO" at me!}  Troy was very interesting, and a little... odd.  I really want to say more about his character, but I feel like in doing so I would be giving too much of the story away.  But it is interesting to see how he helps Delaney and what exactly she learns from him.

To sum up, this is a great quick read, but its even better for younger people {14-17-ish range}.  You have a youngster that loves to read {guy or girl}?  I would recommend this.

1 comment:

Farah said...

Haha. This book would definitely be my range of age*grin*. Glad you liked it though :) Great review! :D

Fara @ Tumbling In Books