Book Review: Fracture by Megan Miranda

Title: Fracture 

Author: Megan Miranda
Series: Standalone
Pages: 262
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Date of Publication: 5th January 2012
Source: Publisher*
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
-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?

My Thoughts:
I have mixed feelings about this book. I had really high hopes for it, because so many people whose opinions I trust had said it was awesome. And it was awesome. But it also wasn't. Allow me to explain.

I started the book, and the first couple of chapters I really liked - it was Delaney trying to figure out what was happening to her and more importantly - why? Why had she managed to survive eleven minutes underwater? She should be dead, but she wasn't, and it was really interesting for me that she would be having these thoughts. If it were me I'd just be so grateful that I was still alive, against all odds. Anyway, once she got back into her routine (or as much as she could after technically dying and coming back to life) though, I got a bit bored. Or not bored, exactly, just uncaring. There just wasn't anything particularly interesting going on, and it slowed down a whole lot.

I think the reason I felt this was the introduction of Troy Varga. He's handsome, hot, and seems to know a lot about Delaney, and surprise surprise, she might just fall for him. Well, I really didn't see that one coming. Anyway, he annoyed me to no end throughout the whole book. I mean, even when I started to enjoy it even more he just pissed me off. There was just something about him, and to be brutally honest I have no idea what it was about him, but I just couldn't stand him. I didn't care what happened to him, I just wanted him to get the hell out of my book. Harsh, I guess, but it's the truth.

Anyway, that's all I'll say about Troy because if I don't stop now, I never will. So yeah, it got slow in the middle. But then it picked up very quickly and all of a sudden, in the middle of the night, I couldn't stop reading. I was up until 1am finishing it, even though I said to myself that I'd only read for 10 minutes. There was just something about it... I don't know, I just couldn't stop reading past the midway point. So if you're reading it, and like me, weren't seeing what everyone else seems to be, keep going because I promise it gets better!

Now I'll talk about the characters that I DID like. Delaney. She was cool, and I liked the mystery that surrounded her as I tried to work out how she managed to survive. I liked finding out about her strange gift (if you can call it that) of finding dying people, and I especially admired her determination to try and save the people even though she's been told countless times that there was nothing she could do. She seemed like a great person who I'd like to be friends with, though some poor decisions on her part really annoyed me. (Everything seems to annoy me lately... I must be a very annoyable person ;P) For example, whenever it came to Decker.

Speaking of, I loved Decker. I've read a couple of books recently about best friends who both want something more but neither wants to ruin their friendship, but in not doing anything about it it's being ruined anyway, and I really like this scenario! It annoyed me constantly throughout the whole book and I was pretty sure that they would get together in the end (I mean, they always do, right?) but I still needed to read through just to make sure that they did. Anyway, I thought it was so cute how he was always there for Delaney no matter what, even when he was maybe dating Tara (I'm not sure if they were ever officially going out though) and his Christmas present to her was adorable... Anyway, he was awesome, and cute, and Delaney was horrid to him on more than one occasion but he just kept going back and it makes you wish you had someone like that... ;)

Overall, Fracture started off disappointingly but finished spectacularly. I'd definitely recommend to any fan of YA who's looking for something that isn't your typical paranormal - it could be contemporary with just a little hint of paranormal. Either way, I think you should read it! And if there are things in it that you don't enjoy, push through because I promise you the ending is awesome. So so awesome. It nearly made me cry, it was that good. So read it!

*Thanks to Bloomsbury for sending me this in exchange for an honest review! In no way has this affected my opinion of the book!


** Also very sorry for my rambly-all-over-the-place-ness. I had a lot of mixed feelings with this book and I'm not all that good with words so apologies if it doesn't make all that much sense! ;) 

My Rating:

I give it 4 Feet!

Challenges:
2011 Paranormal YA Reading Challenge #53
2011 100+ Reading Challenge #107