Make It a Clean Break

Expected Publication: January 17th, 2012
Fracture
By: Megan Miranda
Bloomsbury/Walker Books for Young Readers
ISBN-13: 9780802723093


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

   Delaney Maxwell has a fairly average small-town life.  One night when she's on her way to a party with her best friend Decker, all of that changes abruptly.  She falls through the ice on the lake.  Under for eleven minutes before she's rescued, Delaney is in a coma for a week.  All of the Doctors think she will have extreme brain damage and possibly be a vegetable for the rest of her life.  Delaney wakes up absolutely fine and they have no explanation other than a medical miracle.  At first she doesn't realize why the itch in her brain is pulling her to certain people - then she figures out it means they're going to die soon.  Then this weird boy named Troy Varga - who can do the same thing as Delaney - begins to get close to her.  He has serious issues though and the pressure of her ability and feeling crazy starts to get to Delaney and she begins to self-destruct.  I thought this was a truly interesting book.  The relationships of Delaney and her parents were painful but realistic.  I was totally invested in Delaney's life and her problems getting Decker to understand the complexity of what she was going through.  Also, I come from a very small town myself and that side of things definitely read realistically.  I liked that the paranormal element of this book wasn't overplayed or underplayed - it was just right.  By the time the ending rolls around the book truly comes full circle.  I would highly recommend this book to fans of If I Stay and The Beginning of After.  It was definitely worth the read and it got into my heart more than I thought it would. 

VERDICT:  4.5/5  Stars

*I received an Advanced Reading E-book Copy from the publisher, via NetGalley. No money was exchanged for this review. This book is now available in select stores and online.*