This book is for the 888 Challenge!

I’ve been saving up a stack of books to review later, as I’m currently completing a major project for English which I’ve really procrastinated on, but this one really had an effect on me, and I’d like to go ahead and write about it.

I’d previously enjoyed Mary Pearson’s Scribbler of Dreams, but it didn’t totally blow me away or anything. THE ADORATION OF JENNA FOX, however, did totally blow me away. It was also so amazing that I blew off reading for English, stressing me out now, but it was entirely worth it. This is an amazingly powerful, thought-provoking, just brilliant novel.

Jenna Fox has been told that she has had an accident and was in a coma for a year. Now, she’s awake, but she doesn’t remember her old life at all. In fact, she had to re-learn a lot; she had to learn to smile, to walk. She’s seen home videos of her life, but she’s not even around anything to trigger it. She doesn’t have any of her old belongings. Her family moved from Boston to California, and she is not in contact with anyone except her parents and grandmother.

There are some holes in the story she’s been told, and Jenna really starts to wonder. Not just about her life before the accident, but about the accident and what happened after. Nothing is really as it seems, but I can’t give too much away. Just, trust me, this is an unbelievably fantastic book.

The writing is so captivating, lyrical prose, telling the story in just the perfect way, capturing it all, capturing the characters perfectly. The story itself unfolds slowly, full of suspense, the questions about Jenna and her life before and her life now, and the time in between the two. Mary Pearson captures humanity and human emotions so marvelously.

Aside from the beauty of how the story is told, there is the story itself. It’s so very thought-provoking, raising questions about humanity, identity, and ethics. It takes place in a not-too-distant future; it’s certainly recognizable and familiar to us, but there have been some advances in technology and some other things that let us know it’s certainly the future. It’s probably a within-my-lifetime future, though, and a very possible one.

At the end of this book, I cried. Not because it’s one of those awful depressing stories that ends with someone killing their dog and best friend and then dying in a war or something, but because there are so many emotions captured in this story, because it’s so terribly sad but also hopeful, for so many reasons. It’s so powerful that I can’t possibly capture it in this review but, trust me, read this book. I adored this novel, and I know that you will, too! It comes out in April. Pre-order your copy now! I’ll also definitely be reading more of this incredibly brilliant author’s backlist.