The Adoration of Jenna Fox : Review

Who is Jenna Fox? Seventeen-year-old Jenna has been told that is her name. She has just awoken from a coma, they tell her, and she is still recovering from a terrible accident in which she was involved a year ago. But what happened before that? Jenna doesn’t remember her life. Or does she? And are the memories really hers?

Sum­mary from GoodReads (here)

Review

Title: The Adoration of Jenna Fox
Author: Mary E. Pearson
Pub­lisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Release Date: April 29, 2008 (Get it @ Ama­zon)
For­mat Read: Kin­dle Edi­tion
Print Length: 272 pages
Series:  Jenna Fox Chronicles

I wanted to read The Adoration of Jenna Fox because the sequel will be coming out in a week (The Fox Inheritance) and I’ve seen some great reviews for it, and I wasn’t disappointed in my read-through of it. It’s a relatively quick read for some at under 300 pages, but fills those pages with really interesting character development for Jenna that is unique to this story alone. While many stories are about ‘discovering who you are’, The Adoration of Jenna Fox takes this to a whole other place where Jenna has to learn who she was before she can even figure out who she will be.

Jenna asks haunting questions about just how much of your ‘self’ is really tied up in your memories. How much can you remember or forget before you’re a different person? How much of you is just the sum of your parts? The Adoration of Jenna Fox isn’t shy about asking these questions, and one of the best things about this novel is that it doesn’t try to answer them for you. Instead the reader is left to ponder this out for themselves, as there really is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in the ending. Jenna’s frequent in-between chapters moments of introspection leave lingering thoughts to trickle in later for you to think about.

While I loved Jenna’s character, I found some of the others rather shallow. The ‘romance’ that takes place in the novel is very much a side-story, and is actually rather sudden. I wish Ethan & Alyss’ characters would’ve been fleshed out further then just ‘we’re not normal like everyone else is’. Much of the novel revolves around Jenna’s interactions with her parents, I couldn’t find it in me to genuinely feel for them. Much easier to appreciate was Jenna’s interactions with her grandmother Lily who was a perfect tool to force Jenna to BE someone and not just be the person her parents think she is. Lily refuses to let Jenna just be the person her parents think she was, or the person who watches from recorded movies.

Having read the summary for The Fox Inheritance beforehand, I knew some spoilers about The Adoration of Jenna Fox going in that made the story both less dramatic at the beginning, and perhaps more-so towards the end. I would definitely recommend reading it before The Fox Inheritance at the very least, and to everyone else regardless.