Vengeance

VENGEANCE

by Megan Miranda

Publishing Date: February 13th 2014

Publisher: Bloomsbury Children's 

ISBN: 0802735037

Summary

Falcon Lake wants vengeance. And so, it seems, does someone else... An intense, heart-rending psychological thriller to accompany the chilling and seductive FractureWhen Decker drags his best friend Delaney’s lifeless body out of the frozen lake, he makes a deal: Anyone but her. Everyone but her. The lake releases her. It takes another...All their friends blame Delaney for Carson’s death. But Decker knows the truth: Delaney is drawn to those who are dying, and she would have tried to help Carson.
Or so Decker believes until a body lies in front of him in a pool of water on his kitchen floor. Until he sees in Delaney’s eyes that she knew this would happen too – and she said nothing. Until he realises it isn’t the lake that is looking for revenge – Delaney is part of someone else’s plan.
This powerful and emotionally charged psychological thriller follows Megan Miranda’s stunning debut Fracture.

Review

Can I start off by saying that Fracture didn't actually need a sequel, in fact I wasn't actually going to read this but it came up in a Buddy Read so I decided to give it a go. It's a lot more consistent that it's predecessor, as I found that Fracture was a little chopping in the first half and heartbreaking in the second. With Vengeance it was simple average the whole way through. Also, before you read on if you haven't read the first book yet then DO NOT read this review! It's impossible to review this without dropping some serious Fracture spoilers. 

The story is told from Decker's point of view - where are Fracture was told from Delaney's - as he struggles with a family death. He's angry at the whole, and Delaney and needs to find a way to live in this little town without being consumed by the so called 'curse' of Falcon Lake. Decker and his group of friends are still trying to come to terms with Carson's death and it eclipses they're whole life and with a new girl in town it becomes increasingly clear just how messed up their lives have become. 

I really liked Decker in book one, but I found him a little harsh and after a while just plain annoying in this one. I'm a constant grudge holder but even I thought he needed to give the girl a break! The whole book seems to centre around how Delaney betrayed Decker and how no one is really over the fact she couldn't safe Carson from dying - which again is really harsh. I didn't feel much for her in the beginning, but by the end I did. She was damned if she did and damned if she didn't. She just couldn't win. 

The story itself had some holes in it. It wasn't exactly a mystery what was going on, focusing on the paranormal to hide the completely human acts of vengeance behind the scenes. Don't get me wrong it wasn't all bad, and I did prefer it to the first book but the odd moments that made me smile and the times it caught me breath unfortunately didn't outweigh the fact that I just couldn't get into this book. 

Maybe it just wasn't for me. Maybe it was a case of right book but at the wrong time... I don't know. What I do know is that I think it should have ended with Fracture. Megan's an amazing writer, but I felt like this story just didn't need telling. 

Fracture

Fracture by Megan Miranda

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Title: Fracture

Author: Megan Miranda

Publishing Date: January 17th 2012

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

ISBN: 0802723093

Summary (From Back Cover)

By the time seventeen-year-old Delaney Maxwell is pulled out of the icy waters of a frozen lake, her heart has stopped beating. She is officially dead. Then she starts breathing... The doctors are mystified. But Delaney knows something is very wrong, even though outwardly she has completely recovered.

Pulled by sensations she can't control, Delancey now finds herself drawn to the dying. Is her brain predicting death or causing it? Then Delany meets Troy Varga. Is Troy a kindred spirit who somehow understand her weird and frightening gift? Or are his motives chillingly more sinister...

Review

And as I drove, I felt random pulls. Faintly left. Faintly right. Behind. Ahead. I couldn't escape it. Death was everywhere. It was creeping around the outskirts of my world, like it was searching for me. Like it knew I had escaped and was trying to reclaim me.

If I had to sum this book up in one word it would be heartbreaking! Even the happier moments - which admittedly where few and far between - were soaked with tears. It was an interesting book that by the end had me hook-line-and-sinker, but it took a while to draw me into the characters. It took time for me to connect with the story and I think this is why...

The book starts with Delancey falling through the ice into the lake. It starts with her in hospital, fighting for her life. Now usually when a book jumps straight into the plot I'm gripped, but with this it felt more like being thrown in at the deep end - no pun intended - when you can't swim. There wasn't enough time to develop that connect between the reader and the main character so that we felt the right amount of sympathy towards her. And if I'm honest, it wasn't until the second half of the book that I actually felt like I needed to know how it ended. Saying all that though, this is the only fault I could find with Fracture. It has a descriptive writing style and a handful of characters that have deep routed histories that spill into every page. Not to mention the way in which Megan Miranda twists the story in directions I would never have imagined - well in the second half anyway - and breaks your heart several times over.

This is where I'd usually go into the plot a bit but I think the summary above covers pretty much everything you need to know, so I'm going to move straight onto the characters.

Delancey, newly seventeen and as far as I can tell completely normal... that is until she dies. After falling into the lake nothings ever quite the same, being drawn to the dying will do that to a girl. In a lot of cases where the point view is from a seventeen-year-old girl they can come across winey and irritating, but I didn't mind Delancey too much. It was more the fact that I just wanted her to see what was staring her straight in the face. Decker! He so obviously loved her, from the first chapter where he's sitting by her bedside you can tell he has real feeling for her. But she keep pushing him away. She keeps leaning towards Troy.

Troy... all the way through I had this uncomfortable feeling about him. That something wasn't quite right. I don't want to go into too much detail about him because he's a huge chunk of this books mystery. Just keep an eye out for him and I think it's one of those character's where you'll have to make your own mind up.

Character to watch out for? Delancey's mum. I'm still not 100% sure what happened where or why she acts the way she does throughout the book... maybe you'll have more luck figuring her out. So yeah, if there's one person to watch it's her, purely because if you don't I think you'll end up just as confused as me!

Overall I did really enjoy this book. In fact I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. The only problem I had with it was the fact that it took a while to latch on. I'd recommend this to pretty much any YA fan! And if you're one of those readers who puts down a book if it doesn't draw you in within the first couple of chapters, then I implore you to keep reading. Fracture fractured my heart and I'm excited to see what happens next!

PS. This was me pretty much all the way through Chapter 14 - 17