This novel is a macabre novel. It involves the deepest darkest fears that humans face, such as, if you knew someone was going to die painfully, would you save them the pain by doing the deed yourself? And the other question, if you had one day left, what would you do? When teenager Delaney Maxwell is ice skating on a frozen lake, she falls in, becoming trapped under the ice in frigidly cold waters. Unconsciousness occurs at three minutes. Brain damage begins at four. When you do run out of oxygen, full cardiac arrest occurs. Death is possible at five minutes. likely at seven. Guaranteed at ten. Delaney Maxwell gets pulled out at eleven minutes. Later, she wakes to discover she was in a coma for six days. Delaney encounters her friend and crush Decker, who saved her that day, and did C.P.R. for thirty minutes while the ambulance was arriving. Delaney talks to the doctor, and discovers she should be in a vegetative state, as her brain is so damaged it should have been rendered unusable. However, upon Delaney’s third day of being awake, she feels an itch, inside her head. Like a magnet, it pulls Delaney to a room, where a man is having a heart attack. The doctors quickly usher her back to her room, and give her sedatives to help Delaney sleep. Later that night Delaney awakens to someone trying to cut her life support. She grabs the attacker’s hand, and gets cut by their razor, and the attacker rushes off. When nurses come to check on her, she tells them her story. But they dismiss Delaney’s story as a dream. When she is released, she comes back and meets with her friends. Everything seems normal until a night later, when Delaney notices a shadow moving across a neighbor’s lawn. Before Delaney can investigate, she is caught by her father, who sends her to bed. The day after, she dies in her sleep of gas. That’s when Delaney comes to the realization that she knows when people will die. When she discovers this ghastly secret, she comes to the realization of two things. Who else could have this power, and what are they using it for?
This is a morbidly fascinating novel, engulfing the reader with the question, if you could save someone the pain of one death, and replace it with a peaceful one, would you do it? And also, how would you explain this to them? I would recommend reading this novel, as its incredibly fascinating, but only if you have a strong stomach, and plan on taking a detached view, as if you automatically judge, you may not like the novel. All in all I would highly recommend it. With dark twists and turns at every corner, this makes you question everything you know about life, and its greatest enemy, death.