Reading Reflection: Fracture

Fracture
by Megan Miranda
Published January 17th 2012
P. 262
Rating: 3/5

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 starts with Delaney Maxwell falling through the ice of a lake and her best friend, Decker, finally pulls her out after 11 minutes.  She should be dead, but she isn't.  Instead the doctors scan her brain and find brain damage, but Delaney appears to be utterly normal... except for the weird pull in her brain toward people who are dying.  It was a little strange, but interesting.  She also meets Troy, someone who also developed the same ability after being in a coma. 

I feel that this book could have been soooo much better, that it didn't quite reach its full potential. It still wasn't a bad read, but it could have been so much more.  What I mentioned above is it, that's all.  Well, no, I'm lying.  There's a inkling of romantic interest that begins with Troy and a painfully obvious one with her best friend Decker -- but other than that the story felt flat.  I'm not sure what the story lacked, maybe tension or real suspense, but I never the emotional roller coaster I do when I read books.  I didn't even realize Troy was supposed to be the villain until the end.  I never felt Delaney's struggle with her new draw to the almost dead.  The only time I felt anything was during those awkward and frustrating moments with Decker.

So that's it.  The story had potential that I feel was never really reached, but this is a debut novel so II feel the authors work can only get better from here.