My Thoughts On: Fracture by Megan Miranda

Fracture by Megan Miranda Published by Walker & Company/Bloomsbury Publish Date:  January 17, 2012 272 Pages My Source:  Borrowed

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?  -(summary excerpt from Goodreads.com)

My Thoughts:  As per my norm, I chose to read Fracture because of the really interesting synopsis and the pretty cover. When I finished it, I had to sit on it for a few days and sort through all of my feelings. There is so much packed into this relatively short book that I had to take the time to form some cohesive thoughts. I’m here this morning to see if I can lay them all out for you in ways that make some sense. 

• Delaney Maxwell – Female protagonist. Falls through an ice-covered lake in Maine, stays submerged for eleven minutes. Dies, comes back to life. Tests show significant brain damage, but Delaney acts completely normal with one newly-acquired detail: she can tell when someone nearby is dying. Delaney struggles to cope with her new “skill.” She also is trying to deal with Decker’s survivor’s guilt, which might just be the hardest part of this whole mess. 
• Decker Phillips – Delaney’s next door neighbor, her best friend, the boy she likes is in love with (but neither will admit it). Decker pulled Delaney out of the lake, risking his own life. He feels guilt and shame because he wasn’t very nice to her just before she fell in, and if she’d have died…well, he doesn’t know what he’d have done. Furious (and also heart-broken) at Delaney for kissing another boy, Decker starts a relationship with another girl and uses it to hurt Delaney instead of just talking to her. This pushes Delaney further and further away, into the arms of…
• Troy Varga. Older guy who always seems to be lurking in the shadows wherever Delaney is. Troy always appears out of nowhere and knows information about Delaney that she knows she never shared with him. A dark and mysterious character, Delaney never questions his unusual motives until later in the book, when Troy turns outright creepy. Troy has the same “skill” that Delaney has and can sense when people are dying. At first Delaney is attracted to this similarity between them, and she lets herself fall for Troy (because Decker is having fun with another girl, right?), but the more she learns about Troy, the less she trusts him. Soon, he becomes violent and Delaney is in way over her head… 

Fracture is quite different than anything else I have read. It is a thrilling, psychological, paranormal/contemporary book with a dash of romance thrown in. There is so much inside this relatively short book and I think it is definitely worth a read – I read it in one day and pondered it afterward for a few. 


If you’re a fan of psychological stories that make you think, make sure you add Fracture to your to-be-read list. If you like creepy characters and don’t mind what I’m calling a paranormal/contemporary/thriller crossover, give this one a go…and then let me know what you think! 


*I borrowed this book as part of Around The World Book Tours in exchange for my honest thoughts and opinions. I received no compensation for my review. 

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