Megan is a scientist – turned – teacher – turned – stay-at-home-mom – turned – writer. She is not nearly as indecisive as she sounds. She lives near Charlotte, North Carolina, where she volunteers as an MIT Educational Counselor, does the mom thing by day, and writes by night.
Vengeance by Megan Miranda
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Vengeance is the companion novel to Megan Miranda’s Fracture. If you enjoyed that book I definitely encourage you to read this one too. Heck, if you haven’t read Fracture yet, you should get on that so that when you finish, you can read this one too.
People still believe that something is following Delaney Maxwell around…some sort of curse. Ever since she was pulled out of Falcon Lake, after being submerged for 11 minutes and then being in a coma for 6 days – yet she survived, the belief is that there is a curse involving the lake and she is central to it. Delaney was pulled out and lives but Carson, the boy who pulled her out, is dead. What people don’t know is that ever since Delaney woke up, she has had a special sense, one that allows her to sense when people are dying.
Decker and Delaney are now boyfriend and girlfriend and the story picks up just before they start their senior year of high school. When Decker’s father unexpectedly dies, Decker is angry. He is mad at Delaney because she knew what was going to happen to his dad and he is mad at his parents for hiding things from him. A lot of the first half of the story is Decker dealing with this anger and trying to figure out whether he can forgive Delaney for hiding something so important from him. He does hold it against her and although it isn’t necessarily as black and white as he thinks, he feels like Delaney chose his father over him and ultimately let him die.
In addition to this, there is a bit of a mystery to unravel. Odd things keep happening to Decker and Delaney and through the book; they work to figure out why strange things are going on. First, Decker’s house is destroyed by water, and then windows are busted out in Delaney’s house while Decker and his mom are staying with her family. Oddly enough, Kevin’s car is messed up because of water in the engine. Not wanting to believe that the Curse of Falcon Lake is at work, Decker begins digging into what is going on and he keeps coming back to the people around them.
While Delaney and Decker’s relationship takes a hit, I did like how the characters grew through this book. It was an interesting transition (according to Decker) going from friends to more and now that they aren’t either and Decker is living in Delaney’s house, things are definitely awkward. What I liked was that Delaney gets where Decker’s anger is coming from and she doesn’t hold it against him. She actually allows him to be angry but she also stands up for herself and doesn’t let him get away with treating her horribly. One of my favorite parts was after one of their run-ins while Decker was working on his math homework.
“How long are we gonna keep doing this, Decker?” And I said, “Doing what?” like an asshole. “You’re being an asshole,“ she said. And then I laughed because I knew it.
And that night, I found a note under my door. It said, “To clarify, I didn’t mean you ARE an asshole. Just that you’re acting like one. Also, #2 is wrong. Good night.”
The secondary characters help move the story along. From Kevin and Tara to Maya and Janna. All play a critical part in the story and because I don’t want to give anything away, I won’t say a lot here. Just know that all of these characters are important to both the mystery of what is going on with all of the strange things as well as getting Decker to figure out what he wants in his relationship with Delaney. Just when I thought all Kevin cared about was having a good time, he comes through and tells Decker to get his crap figured out.
“Decker,” Kevin said. “Whatever’s going on with Delaney, fix it already. You look like shit. It’s messing with my mood.”
“Enough,” I said
“No,” he said. “Enough from you. Break up, fine. But the moping and gloom and angry eyes, it stops. It’s awkward. Every lunch I get, like, a tension headache or something,” he said. He rolled his shoulders back. “I think it’s giving me neck pain.”
I really liked being back in Decker and Delaney’s stories. I know this is listed as a companion novel but I really think it would be tough to read this book without reading Fracture as there are a number of things mentioned but not necessarily explained. I think it might be tough to just dive into this story if you don’t have the full story from Fracture. If you like a good mystery and interesting story I definitely recommend you read this series. I found myself unable to put this one down and applaud Megan Miranda on a great follow up story.
Thank you to Netgalley and Bloomsbury for the review copy.
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