Title: The Adoration of Jenna Fox
Author: Mary E. Pearson
Genre: YA light sci-fi
Read: Mid Oct 2010
Summary: Liked it a lot.
I’ve been disappointed by a lot of the contemporary Young Adult novels I’ve been reading and this was a pleasant surprise. Told in first person present tense this is the story of a girl who awakes from a mysterious accident with almost no memory. She doesn’t know what to make of what her “parents” tell her and the videos and images of a life she doesn’t remember. It’s very light Science Fiction, set in a near future with very little prose-time spent on explanation of tech stuff — which is fine. It’s just very well written and the point of view engaging. The characters feel real, and you invest some emotion in them. At a certain core level this is all it takes. For many young readers the concepts of deconstructed identity might be novel — for me as a sci-fi reader who likes that theme this book wasn’t really about the plot. But there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just a good book and an easy read. I liked the voice and found it pleasantly free of forced attitude.
