Book: Fracture by Megan Miranda

Source: Book Store

Release Date: 5^th January 2012

Shelfability: Get!

Want to know why I bought this book? It’s stupid but here it is: cause the authors’ name sounds like two first names. Yes, I am ready for real life and the real world! Well, I had also just finished a miserable day of college exams (we have ours after Christmas, how miserable) and I needed perking up.

So, Fracture! The story centres on a teenage girl called Delaney Maxwell, who accidentally falls through the surface of a lake she thought was frozen over. Not good-Delaney is clinically dead for eleven minutes before her childhood friend Decker is able to revive her-and even though she’s physically alroight, Delaney’s not really normal anymore. She can pick out the people around her who are going to die soon. Not a skill I’d want to have, just sayin’. Then a dark, mysterious stranger turns up in town and Delaney knows he’s somehow connected to her new gift-but in a good way or a bad way?

I looooovvvved this book. I was in just the right mood for it when it came along and I think this is one I might actually read again. Delaney was a great character; very normal, which you don’t often get in this type of a novel. Delaney reacted to her accident the same way I might-she’s just embarrassed and annoyed about the whole thing, and wishes her new ‘gift’ would go away. He friend Decker is also completely adorable. I still don’t see why I never had a boy like him next door when I was growing up. The supporting characters are great too, and there’s just the right amount of creepiness; not enough to make you put the book in the freezer ala Joey in Friends, but enough to creep you out just a little.

Rating: Nine out of ten. Go out and get this book!

This Means War

I had one of those rows at home today, about the sheer volume of reading material that I bring into the house.

This irks me. They don’t give out when I’m handing over my Steinbecks to my younger brother for school, or keeping my dad supplied with the only genre he will read; crime fiction. My mother has literally not bought a book since I got a part time job and started buying my own books, so it suits her sometimes to have novels everywhere. In fact it suits her most of the time, except when she’s premenstrual and pissy. Like today.

Today, however, she was in one of her moods and it was decided (well, she decided) that some of the books had to go.

The college pile was non-negotiable, so I was able to hang on to lots of my favourites that way (Penguin Classics are easy to pass off as college books when English Lit is part of your degree). Travel literature took a serious hit. Even some of the Bill Brysons had to go, but they’re not too difficult to replace thank god. The whole Twilight saga went (I wasn’t too sorry about those to be honest) and there was near bloodshed over my Eva Ibbotsons. Anybody who knows the lengths I went to for my copy of The Morning Gift would never even dream of making me part with it. I saved them all, though, even if they’re all hidden under the bed.

It was the Harry Potters, however, that caused the most consternation. I’ve been reading them since the tender age of seven, before they were a big deal. I remember reading the first one in the playground at school and everyone being like ‘Harry who?’, but then wanting to borrow them six months later after the third one got loads of press coverage and all my friends started calling me Hermione. My current Harrys are actually a replacement set; we lost the covers from the original Philosopher and Chamber, because they were passed around my entire extended family, and the wear and tear made them fall off. Boo.

She scoffed at my Irish language edition of Philosophers Stone too, which made me seethe with temper. It isn’t for nothing that I’m the only member of my household who can hold a proper conversation in Irish. And again, I went to great lengths to get the book which wasn’t easy or cheap to come by.

My mother even suggested that maybe I am too old for some of my books. Well, really! They teach Harry Potter in university these days!

Now I can’t sleep properly, because there are books hidden in my bed. Literally under the covers with me. Not good.

These are the lengths I have gone to, to save my copy of Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Dark Side. Worth it though.

Books, Books and more Books!

Wahey. Exams over, back to normal college routine (though final semester ever which is stressful. Prospect of severe unemployment and all). Which means much reading can be done underneath the desk at all my boring lectures! Hooray!

Not all my lectures are boring. We have Dapper again, which is a cause for celebration, though I’ve nearly had to move seats to escape the cooing mature students. Honestly, you’d think a group of ladies with a mean age of fifty seven would have more sense but noooooo. They sit in their little row (which they elbow you out of the way to get to, because god forbid they would have to sit somewhere else) and twitter away like fourteen year olds watching a Twishite film. Honestly.

My own friends aren’t much better to be honest. Today, I was very dismayed to discover that, though I’d managed to secure seats in the coveted back row, three of our number chose to sit at the very front just to get a better view of the delectable Dapper. Granted, he bears a striking resemblance to James Potter but really? I’ve spent three years marking our territory in that back row, all to be sacrificed for the first decent looking lecturer to pop up? Hoes over bros girls. Or indeed, prose.

Anyway, on to books. I have had a birthday, and despite nearly having to get a mortgage to buy my books for this semester I’ve read plenty. I’ve been introduced to the goddess that is Stephanie Perkins; I think that Anna and the French Kiss may well be one of the best young adult romances I’ve read ever. And Lord knows I’ve read enough. I also got a massive package from The Book Depository, containing:

Hourglass by Myra McIntire

Life Eternal by Yvonne Woon

The Catastrophic History of You and Me by Jess Rothenberg

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

Every Other Day by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Always a Witch by Carolyn McCullough

Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins

I have also read Heaven by Christoph Marzi, Hollow Pike by James Dawson, Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake and the Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin. All of which were excellent, I’ve got to say. Really enjoyed the lot of them, and I think I might do reviews for a couple as well, seeing as that’s very a la mode right now.

Right. I have a massive pile of notes screaming for my attention. Chat soon.