Shelly's Book Blog

The Adoration of Jenna Fox, by Mary E. Pearson, is another YA novel from the School Library Journal's Best Books 2008 list. This story is set in the future when medical technology has advanced to such a degree that it is possible to "save" people in new and kind of scary ways. Jenna wakes up from a year-long coma to find that she does not remember who she is. She watches hours of video that her parents shot as she was growing up but cannot seem to find the Jenna on the screen within herself. She has a mystery to solve because her parents are not exactly forthcoming when she starts asking questions about her past.
I was eager to read this book because I thought it would be similar to Neal Shusterman's Unwind, which I really liked. It is and it isn't. Both books depict a future in which technology has run amuck, but Pearson's writing style is much different. She is more indirect, even poetic, and the action and suspense of Unwind is missing. Pearson raises the same kinds of questions, though, about the slippery slope we seem to heading down when we pursue technologies like cloning. What about people's souls? What about when the unexpected happens (as it usually does)? I think The Adoration of Jenna Fox richly deserves its place on the "Best of 2008" list and I hope people will read it and start asking these questions.