A lot can happen in eleven minutes. Decker can run two miles easily in eleven minutes. I once wrote an English essay in ten. No lie.
Eleven minutes might as well be eternity under water. It only takes three minutes without air for loss of consciousness. Permanent brain damage begins at four minutes. And then, when the oxygen runs out, full cardiac arrest occurs. Death is possible at five minutes. Probable at seven. Definite at ten.
Decker pulled me out at eleven.~~~~~~
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?
A book about a near death experience that leaves the protagonist inexplicably changed... add some kind of preternatural gift or connection... and I was hooked.
The beginning was wonderful. There's a creeping dread and a lot of action. But then, about a third of the way through, there was the f-word. I thought, "Hmmm... really? Was that necessary to the story?" But, I let it go. By the end of the book, there it was again... and again.
What do you think? Am I being too critical of a young adult novel?
Otherwise, it was an exciting story with a great paranormal twist.
Not in my opinion (too critical, that is). I have quit reading books that have too much of that kind of language in them. As a teacher, I wouldn't feel it appropriate to recommend a book with that kind of language in it - at the least, I would want it to have a warning of sorts (explicit language) similar to the movies perhaps so that I could at least be prepared or know that it was in there if I had not personally read the book. Otherwise, the book sounds really interesting.
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