Book Review: Fracture

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?

Fracture is one of those books I had my eye on for a while, and I was extremely pleased when I found a copy at the library. Admittedly, I've kind of been "off" paranormal novels for a while. I think perhaps I overloaded myself with too much fantasy/sci-fi last year, but Fracture proved to be a good novel to ease myself back into the genre.

By all accounts, Delaney Maxwell shouldn't be alive. When she was pulled from the icy lake, it had been eleven minutes. No one expected her to come out of the coma, and if she did, she should have had severe brain damage. Yet, somehow, Delaney survived. Despite what the brain scans said, she was fine. Or so it would seem.

Delaney quickly realizes that something has happened to her. An itch in her brain seems to pull her toward the dying. Scared and eager for answers, she meets Troy, who has also survived a coma and also seems to feel the pull.

I found Fracture to be a really fascinating read. In my mind I was expecting something a little more out there--as far as the paranormal aspect goes--so I was pleasantly surprised to see the science side of things downplayed. The doctors couldn't explain how she survived, or how Delaney continued to function as she always had. The itch in her brain is written off as being hallucinations caused by her medication and the traumatic experience.

I actually enjoyed the fact that doctors couldn't find anything, which left Delaney to try to figure things out for herself. When Delaney met Troy, who also seems to have the same ability, I was, of course, wary of him, and I'd hoped that he would have some sort of insight. However, Troy's darker side seems to emerge, and even by the end of the novel, I still couldn't decide whether he was actually a bad guy, misguided or just misunderstood.

Delaney's miraculous survival is not without it's complications, though. Her mother is terrified of losing her (even though the worst has already seemingly happened). Decker, Delaney's best friend, saved her from the icy water, but things haven't been the same between them since.

Overall, I thought the story was very intriguing. I liked that there was a mix of the mysterious and paranormal paired with every day trials of being a teenager. I felt that the ending was a little abrupt and would have liked for a bit more there, but I was satisfied with the novel as a whole.