Book Review: Fracture by Megan Miranda.

Product details:
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Release date: January 17th 2012.
Paperback, 262 pages.
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Ages: 12+
Source: Received from publisher for review.

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?

The day that should have been Delaney Maxwell’s last day on earth started out like any other day, but then a tragic accident saw her fall into the icy waters of a frozen lake, and remain under for too long to survive. Delaney was without oxygen for eleven minutes. Her death should have been a certainty at ten. But Delaney is alive, and better yet, the accident hasn’t left her with any lasting damage, at least not that anyone can see. But Delaney has changed, she’s been touched by death, and now the dead are calling to her.

A lot can change in eleven minutes…

I wanted to love Fracture, I really did, but while the premise and opening chapters of Megan Miranda’s debut novel are excellent and really piqued my interest, as I read on, I felt as though I really wasn’t connecting with this one. I know that a big part of that was due to the characters.  Delaney herself left me cold – I never really felt like I got to know what was going on with her, and what I did know of her, I didn’t really like. Her reactions to certain events and to certain people were strange to me – from her uneasy relationship with her parents, to her friendship that may be something more with best friend Decker, to her  strange association with mysterious newcomer Troy – none of these relationships seemed to ring true or sit easy with me. I’ll talk about the boys later, but don’t even get me started on Delaney’s mother and how she treated her daughter. I mean, this woman obviously has longstanding issues of her own, but lets just say those parenting skills were lacking.

When I started reading this book, I expected mystery with a supernatural slant, but that’s not really what Fracture is. Sure there is the mystery of why Delaney is drawn to the dying, but there’s never really any resolution offered to this, and I guess that’s not really the point here. While I initially thought that Fracture had its roots in the paranormal, the book instead is a study of the complexities and mysteries of the brain, of Near Death Experiences and why sometimes people walk away from accidents that should have left them dead. If I had known all this before I started my reading, then maybe I would have enjoyed this one more, but instead I just kept on waiting for that supernatural twist.

Troy initially seems to have the answers that Delaney needs. He’s the only one who really knows what Delaney is going through, having gone through a similar experience, and so she finds herself drawn to him despite the fact that he’s kind of a creep with scary stalker tendencies. Right from their first meeting Troy struck me as unhinged, so I didn’t really buy it when Delaney indulged in an impromptu make-out session with him which pretty much came out of the blue and seemed totally out of character for her.

Troy has a rival for Delaney’s affections in Decker, the boy who saved Delaney’s life, and her best friend. Now, I love best friend turned romantic interest storylines, and there’s all this tension between Delaney and Decker, but for the most part, they are just downright nasty to each other at times.  I will say though that Decker was my favourite of all the characters. He’s so obviously in love with Delaney and she just doesn’t seem to get it, so who can really blame him for hooking up with someone else…

While Fracture just didn’t work out for me, I know I’m in the minority. I’ve read a whole lot of glowing reviews for the book, but we just didn’t connect. That said, one thing I did like was Megan Miranda’s writing style, so even though I didn’t fall in love with her debut, I’ll definitely be checking out future releases from her.