*We'd like to welcome our newest Lark, Jen, to the nest. Jen's information will be added to the about us page soon. Also, her signature isn't quite done yet, but I'll get it added to the post as soon as it is. Show her some comment love since this is her first review here at Reading Lark.*
By: Megan Miranda
Published By: Walker & Company
Publication Date: January 27, 2012
Page Count: 272
Buy it at Amazon or IndieBound
Source: Provided by Publisher
Audience: YA
This was really really good. I think that anyone who thought The Body Finder byKimberly Derting was good will really like this. It's not the same, but it is similar and different all at the same time. Just as enjoyable in terms of plot, theme and characterization. The only thing the Body Finder has that this lacks is a little more heat, if you know what I mean! ;)
The main character, Delaney, survives drowning in a frozen lake, when she was technically dead for 11 minutes. She shouldn't have survived, and things get weird when she wakes up. First of all, she has brain damage but no apparent effects from it. Secondly, she suffers from strange feelings which drive her increasingly strange behavior, and thirdly, she becomes the target of a stranger's curiosity. Troy is a bit of a mystery for a lot of the book, and his character arc is developed really well.
Delaney has a lot of issues to work through, and many of her relationships are affected by her miraculous survival, including how she relates to her best friend, Decker. He is positively lovely, and is quite welcome to sweep me off my feet anytime!
If I had a minor complaint, it is something that generally always annoys me - characters who, when told what they are desperate to hear, still can't get their acts together to do something about it. That kind of selfish martyrdom really winds me up. Fortunately the character in question here isn't an idiot for too long. :)
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.
