Review : Fracture

Posted by on February 23, 2012 10:48 am in 4.5 stars reads | 3 comments

Fracture by Megan Miranda
Pages : 262
Genre : Ya, Fiction, Paranormal
Stand Alone
My Rating :

What it’s about :

When Delaney fell through the ice into the cold water, her chances for survival were very slim; and yet here she is, a week later, alive despite being underwater for eleven minutes.

Her doctor can’t explain any of it; why she survived, why she woke up from her coma, why she isn’t brain damaged. And he certainly can’t explain why she feels this sudden itch when she gets close to dying people. Did she develop a new ability, or is she, after all, damaged? If anyone can answer, maybe the mysterious Troy, who seems to always be around when she expects it the least,  can…

My Thoughts :

I am feeling generous with the stars today!

Fracture was surprisingly good. Not that I was expecting something bad (if I was, I wouldn’t have read it!), but I didn’t think it would be this good! This feeling probably comes from the fact that Fracture isn’t your typical YA paranormal novel – and because of that, I can see why many readers were disappointed with it, or just didn’t like it as much as I did.

There’s a romance, even a love triangle, although in retrospect, not really. On one side you have Troy, the new and mysterious and really dark kind of guy, and on the other you have Delaney’s best friend Decker, her neighbor who has forever been part of her life. The tension between these two was very different from the one Delaney had with Troy, but very complicated, too. Troy seems to have answers and, in a situation where her parents don’t trust her and her best friend has his own secrets, he seems to be the only one she can turn to. However, she desperately wants to be back to normal with Decker, but as they each keep things from each other, their relationship is now very uncomfortable. It felt realistic to me that their relationship changed as the grew up, and that they weren’t sure what do to with it, or how to act around each other anymore.

I loved Delaney as a character, even though she might not be the most likable person out there. She is honest about how she feels, for instance saying that others’ generosity surprise her because she isn’t sure she would have done the same things in return. I’ve never liked characters that are too perfect, so to have Delaney’s flaws exposed like this made her feel more realistic than most characters. Plus, her parents, very present in her life, felt extremely real, too. As much as I felt for Delaney, I felt for her mother too.

Also, I really liked the writing. Something in the way the author uses the words made it easy to relate to Delaney, to feel how she felt and to root for her.

The paranormal part was, in some ways, a very small part of the story. It’s there, and a constant preoccupation of Delaney’s, yes. But there is so much more going on in this little book! If you are expecting ghost hunting or action or lots of paranormal activity, you might get disappointed. Everything about Delaney’s new “ability” is dealt with in a very normal way, and though we get some answers, nothing is completely clear by the end of the story (not to me, anyway!)

Which brings me to the book’s conclusion. I felt it was a really strong one. It was a bit dark, a bit hopeful, but also true to life in that not every piece of Delaney’s life is suddenly fixed. We can see that things are getting better and will probably be even better in the coming months, but not everything is tied up with a nice little bow.

I almost only have positives to say about Fracture and, honestly, I don’t even want to bother with the negative aspects of it. Without being a life changing story, it definitely was a breath of fresh air among other paranormal YA novels, and one of my favorites of 2012 so far. I’m looking forward to reading more of Megan Miranda, hopefully in a close future!

3 Comments

  1. I don’t read a lot of paranormal but might like this one since it’s a small part of the story.

  2. Oh this does sound really good, and you have a lot of good things to say about several aspects of the book, which intrigues me. I would love to read this one and see what I think, and your review was wonderful and very comprehensive today! Thanks for sharing this!

  3. I am so glad you feel the same one. Other people’s reactions to this was decidedly lukewarm and I couldn’t understand why but now that you mention it, perhaps it is because it is not as flashily paranormal as they might like it to be. I agree that the book’s greatest strength was its writing. So very powerful. 😀

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