Jenny Pox - Review

Jenny Pox (The Paranormals, # 1)

By: JL Bryan

Published: July 22nd 2010

214 pages

Genre: YA, Paranormal, Fantasy

Source: Personal Kindle Library

( Goodreads | Amazon )

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Eighteen-year-old Jenny Morton has a horrific secret: her touch spreads a deadly supernatural plague, the "Jenny pox." She lives by a single rule: Never touch anyone. A lifetime of avoiding any physical contact with others has made her isolated and painfully lonely in her small rural town.

Then she meets the one boy she can touch. Jenny feels herself falling for Seth...but if she's going to be with him, Jenny must learn to use the deadly pox inside her to confront his ruthless and manipulative girlfriend Ashleigh, who secretly wields the most dangerous power of all.

*Not recommended for readers under eighteen.

My initial reaction to the concept and the beginning of Jenny Pox was how terribly sad and lonely of a life Jenny must have. Not being able to touch anyone. Being a social pariah. Not even being able to hug your dad. Her house is pretty much a junkyard for all of her dad's spare parts and such. And then little Rocky shows up--a stray 3-legged-dog that Jenny adopts. But of course, she can't pet him or she'll kill him. It all set the tone for a very sad story.

I loved Rocky, so when a certain event takes place toward the beginning of the book, I was certain that this was the worst book I'd ever read. It was horrible. I was so emotional. However, that turned into a period of complete confusion because I couldn't tell what in the world just happened and then led to me thinking "maybe this is the best book I've ever read."

Jenny Pox was not at all what I thought it was going to be. It bounced back and forth between Jenny and Ashleigh. And I didn't care about reading Ashleigh's part at all. Not only is she an evil person, but I just didn't get her. Yeah, she wants to rule the world and all of that jazz, and it was just all a means to an end. But seriously. Come on.

Toward the end of the book, things just got weird and there was a lot going on that I was reading and I thought to myself "I comprehend the words that I'm reading, but at this same time, this just doesn't make sense." The end of the book also had more description and less dialogue for my preference-if there's too much description, I space out because what I really care about is what's going on with the characters, not what everything looks like, etc. Overall I wasn't impressed with the ending.

Also, the pot usage really got on my nerves. As well as all the crazy Christians in the story. Yeah, I admit they're out there. But this seems to be the ONLY type of "Christian" character we see in today's literature that's not "Christian literature." Come on authors....will someone please write a Christian character who's not a loony-bin-escapee! PLEASE!

I have such a hard time giving books anything below 3 stars for a couple of reasons. One is because I don't typically read much that I don't actually like. Two is because I know that the author put a lot of work into this book and I hate to be "too hard" on something that took so much work. But the truth is, my 3 star rating is "I liked it," and well...I just didn't. That's not to say it's a "bad" book. It just wasn't for me--I didn't enjoy the overall experience of this book.

My final opinion is that Jenny Pox was a book that held a lot of potential, but didn't end up being an enjoyable read for me. I'm giving it 2 Stars. Have you read Jenny Pox? If so, what did you think? Let me know!