(ARC) YA Book Review: Fracture by Megan Miranda

Release Date: 17 January 2012
Publisher: Walker & Company
Source: Around the World ARC Tours
(also received a copy via NetGalley & the publisher)

Goodreads 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--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 to start by saying that standalone novels are such a breath of fresh air! It's so nice to read a novel that takes you from a beginning to an end and doesn't leave you with a cliffhanger ending. Okay, moving on to the actual review...

Fracture is an intense read.  From start to finish, Ms. Miranda doesn't mess around.  Seventeen-year-old Delaney was dead--and now she's not.  She shouldn't be alive. Now the dead call to her and she's helpless to stop it--completely unable to save their lives, even when it's someone close to her.

Delaney is a startling and realistic character.  She's not made out to be someone who's nice for the sake of being nice.  She's rough around the edges, which for me was a nice change of pace.  I enjoyed the less-than-perfect main character because I really connected with her.  After the accident, she feels lost and confused and I think that came through really well in the story development. To top it all off, Delaney suffers from some severe survivor's guilt, which is only reinforced by the actions of her friends later in the book.

Decker is the perfect best friend and I honestly wish we could have seen more of him (dual-narrative would have been awesome).  It's really hard to watch Delaney basically push him away and I wish she would have trusted him with her secret early on in the book. Actually, I found myself wishing she would simply confide in him about anything that was going on in her life because she clearly needed to talk to someone and he wanted to be there for her. I know Troy tried to be there for him, but something about him made me distrust him from the start...

I would definitely recommend this to readers of contemporary YA, as the paranormal element isn't really overplayed in a major way, but it's a definite must read for fans who like just a little supernatural in their YA fiction.  This is really a story about acceptance, love, and living your life to its fullest. This well-crafted novel will remind you that life is short and everyone's time is limited.

If you only had one day left to live, what would you do?