Fracture (Fracture Series #1)

by Megan Miranda

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781408817391
Publisher:	Bloomsbury UK
Publication date:	01/28/2012
Series:	War That Came Early #04 , #1
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)
Age Range:	13 - 17 Years

About the Author

Megan Miranda was a scientist and high school teacher before writing Fracture, which came out of her fascination with scientific mysteries-especially those associated with the brain. Megan has a BS in biology from MIT and spent her post-college years either rocking a lab coat or reading books. She lives near Charlotte, North Carolina, where she volunteers as an MIT Educational Counselor. Fracture is her first novel.

www.meganmiranda.com

Editorial Reviews

…a compelling medical thriller-cum-romance that proves to be surprisingly life-affirming…The science angle gives this mystery a fresh, intriguing twist, and Delaney's intelligent first-person voice and sensitive reflections deepen it.
—The Washington Post

Mary Quattlebaum

Miranda’s debut is a captivating and intelligent story of love and death with a dash of the supernatural. Seventeen-year-old Delaney Maxwell “dies” after falling into a frozen Maine lake. Rescued and revived by her best friend Decker after 11 minutes under the ice, Delaney spends six days in a coma and awakens with an itch deep in her brain that, again and again, leads her to people who are on the verge of death. Unresolved feelings and guilt over the near-drowning put tremendous stress on Delaney and Decker’s relationship, which is further complicated by Troy, a secretive older boy who is also drawn toward the dying. Delaney continues to struggle in the accident’s aftermath, and a devastating prediction of death only makes matters worse. Miranda’s riveting plot drives to an equally tense climax as she gracefully weaves together themes of suffering, compassion, jealousy, friendship, and trust. The fluid writing, empathetic characters, and big questions raised elevate this paranormal romance into a haunting meditation on what it means to be human and to truly live. Ages 12?up. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

In the opening pages of this book, Delaney survives falling into freezing water, despite being under water for eleven minutes. This accident leaves her in a coma for several days, but when she awakes, she realizes that she is inexplicably drawn to death. She can tell when someone is near death, and strangely enough, there is another person in her small town that can do the same. Troy is dark and brooding and using his talent to end the suffering of his victims, while Delaney feels the need to protect and warn them. Delaney is a well-rounded character because she has worries other than her accident, such as her relationship with her neighbor and best friend, Decker, her mother, and keeping up her school work. The relationship between Troy and Delaney is captivating since they are really only interested in each other due to a common experience, yet they have completely different opinions about their talent. This book works as a good teen drama plot with a supernatural twist, so many libraries will want this volume for those that only want a taste of the unexplainable. Reviewer: Tiffany Torbeck

Children's Literature - Tiffany Torbeck

Delaney Maxwell is a walking miracle. She survived an eleven-minute submersion under the ice of Falcon Lake before best friend Derek could pull her to safety. After emerging from a six-day coma, doctors cannot figure out why their patient does not require weeks of therapy even though her brain scan is a train wreck. As Delaney gears up to stay on the valedictorian track, she begins to discover that recovery is about more than overdue homework. Derek is riddled with guilt despite his heroic rescue. His and Delaney's platonic relationship was already beginning to shift into something not so platonic. Now it is just complicated. Delaney's mom, a control freak brought to the edge by her daughter's near miss, becomes completely overbearing. Delaney discovers her strange new sense—she is physically drawn to those in grave danger but powerless to help them. Enter mysterious Troy, another coma survivor experiencing similar symptoms, with a boatload of baggage and frightening ideas about what to with his unusual sensitivity. As a first novel, Fracture scores high points. Delaney is an engaging personality, and Miranda is able to sustain her protagonist's sharp voice throughout. Mom, Derek, Troy, and several minor characters are realistic, distinctive, and interesting. The story suffers minor flaws in its willingness to become cinematically predictable at times. Also, Delaney's propensity to run from Troy one moment and end up in his arms the next does not seem believable. Still, readers will find Delaney delightfully genuine and her story compelling. Put this in the hands of fans of Gayle Forman's If I Stay (Penguin, 2009/VOYA February 2009)and Where She Went (Penguin, 2011/VOYA June 2011). Miranda's promising first novel will build a fan base anxious to read an even better second one. Reviewer: Lauri J. Vaughan

VOYA - Lauri J. Vaughan

Gr 8 Up—When Delaney Maxwell, 17, falls through the ice, her best friend, Decker, saves her, but not until 11 minutes have passed. After six days in a coma, she wakes up with few side effects. Her MRI indicates brain damage, but she seems to show no signs of it. Of course, it causes concern that her hands tremble, and she is strangely drawn to people who are about to die. Delaney meets mysterious Troy, 19, who knows all about her situation and is drawn to the same dying people. Decker is obviously in love with Delaney, and she with him, even though they are both trying to fight this change in their close friendship. With the additional tension that Troy adds to the mix, Delaney's strange attraction to people on the brink of death, and strain among their circle of friends and families, readers are never sure if the pair will ever be together. The story sometimes seems to be headed toward the supernatural, and then it suddenly makes a sharp turn toward realistic science, and then back again. The love triangle, combined with the allure of danger, will carry readers through this story that pulls them back every time they might feel ready to give up.—Jake Pettit, Thompson Valley High School, Loveland, CO

School Library Journal

Eleven full minutes pass before 17-year-old Delaney's best friend Decker pulls her from beneath the ice of a northern Maine lake. Can she recover from the bizarre results of her long period without oxygen? Or, perhaps more importantly, can their relationship, evolving from being soul mates for years toward being romantically involved, survive? Even though the doctors say Delaney should be severely brain damaged, the only aftereffect she can discover is that she's suddenly aware of--and irresistibly drawn to--those around her who are about to die. It's through that fixation that she meets handsome, intriguing Troy, who seems to share her new compulsion, but he has dark, disturbing secrets in connection to it. Delaney's mother begins an emotional disintegration that results in her trying to keep the teen drugged with sedatives, adding an unnecessary complication to the plot, and Decker becomes involved with another girl, leaving Delaney no one to confide in. Her first-person narration and her issues with Decker largely ring true, but her mother's problems feel contrived. Teetering between tired, predictable romance and edgy thriller, the breathlessly scary moments of this effort provide sufficient pizzazz to keep the plot moving forward, even though it's sometimes bogged down by Delaney's too-trite soul searching. An occasionally thrilling paranormal romance with enough spellbinding incidents to overcome the clichéd components. (Paranormal romantic thriller. 11 & up)

Kirkus Reviews