FRACTURE

Eleven full minutes pass before 17-year-old Delaney’s best friend Decker pulls her from beneath the ice of a northern Maine lake. Can she recover from the bizarre results of her long period without oxygen?

Or, perhaps more importantly, can their relationship, evolving from being soul mates for years toward being romantically involved, survive? Even though the doctors say Delaney should be severely brain damaged, the only aftereffect she can discover is that she’s suddenly aware of—and irresistibly drawn to—those around her who are about to die. It’s through that fixation that she meets handsome, intriguing Troy, who seems to share her new compulsion, but he has dark, disturbing secrets in connection to it. Delaney’s mother begins an emotional disintegration that results in her trying to keep the teen drugged with sedatives, adding an unnecessary complication to the plot, and Decker becomes involved with another girl, leaving Delaney no one to confide in. Her first-person narration and her issues with Decker largely ring true, but her mother’s problems feel contrived. Teetering between tired, predictable romance and edgy thriller, the breathlessly scary moments of this effort provide sufficient pizzazz to keep the plot moving forward, even though it’s sometimes bogged down by Delaney’s too-trite soul searching.

An occasionally thrilling paranormal romance with enough spellbinding incidents to overcome the clichéd components.  (Paranormal romantic thriller. 11 & up)