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trin's review against another edition
2.0
Teenage Jenna wakes up after an accident with no memory of who she is—though she knows all of [a: Thoreau|10264|Henry David Thoreau|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1392432620p2/10264.jpg]’s [b: Walden|16902|Walden|Henry David Thoreau|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1465675526s/16902.jpg|2361393] by heart. As quickly becomes apparent, what’s going on is far more complex than a case of simple old amnesia! Jenna’s slow investigation into what really happened to her ensues.
I was disappointed by this. I said “slow investigation” above because I found the pacing almost glacial: the narrative slinks along, gradually uncovering twists that utterly failed to surprise me. It doesn’t help that the first person POV was entirely affectless; I understand that this may have been partially intentional and dictated by the plot, but I found it very dull to read. Jenna might have amnesia, but I felt like I had déjà vu: I’ve just read too many other similar stories. This one needed to have something to distinguish itself, to make it stand out, but aside from some mildly interesting ideas about future issues with science and technology, there just wasn’t anything new here. I appreciate that Pearson was trying to convey some real ideas about what it means to be human, but her characters were too two-dimensional for her message to have any effect on me. And I really, really hated the trite epilogue—it seemed very fake, and cheapened the sense of realism that the rest of the narrative was at least striving for.
[Insert painfully obvious joke about not adoring Jenna Fox at all here]
I was disappointed by this. I said “slow investigation” above because I found the pacing almost glacial: the narrative slinks along, gradually uncovering twists that utterly failed to surprise me. It doesn’t help that the first person POV was entirely affectless; I understand that this may have been partially intentional and dictated by the plot, but I found it very dull to read. Jenna might have amnesia, but I felt like I had déjà vu: I’ve just read too many other similar stories. This one needed to have something to distinguish itself, to make it stand out, but aside from some mildly interesting ideas about future issues with science and technology, there just wasn’t anything new here. I appreciate that Pearson was trying to convey some real ideas about what it means to be human, but her characters were too two-dimensional for her message to have any effect on me. And I really, really hated the trite epilogue—it seemed very fake, and cheapened the sense of realism that the rest of the narrative was at least striving for.
[Insert painfully obvious joke about not adoring Jenna Fox at all here]
smateer73's review against another edition
4.0
This book was so good. It is very thought provoking, and the language is beautiful and poetic. The plot is excellently done, and the characters and their development are amazing.
outoftheblue14's review against another edition
5.0
I used to be someone.
Someone named Jenna Fox.
That's what they tell me. But I am more than a name. More than they tell me. More than the fact and statistics they fill me with. More than the video clips they make me watch.
More. But I'm not sure what.
I won The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson from Dewey, and I'm very glad I did. Thank you, Dewey, for sending this book to me!
In fact, I had been coveting this book for some time. The first thing I noticed was the beautiful book cover. What about the butterfly, I wondered, in abook that deals with a girl awakening froma coma? Of course, the butterfly has a meaning, but I'm not going to tell you what it is... too spoilery.
After a terrible car accident, Jenna Fox, a seventeen-year-old girl, awakens from a year-long coma to find out that she doesn't remeber anything of heself or her accident. Jenna doesn't recognize the world she lives in: a new house in a new state, with parents who seem to adore her but control her every movement. Slowly, Jenna starts to leanr things again, and discovers truths her parents want to keep hidden from her--truths that involve her own identity.
This is a science-fiction book set in a not-so-distant future.. I used to dislike science fiction, but after reading this book, I think I might give this genre another chance. Here is how Jenna describes her world in the first pages of the book:
The accident was over a year ago. I've been awake for two weeks. Over a year has vanished. I've gone from sixteen to seventeen. A second woman has been elected president. A twelfth planet has been named in the solar system. The last wild polar bear has died, Headline news that could not stir me. I slept through it all.
Besides Jenna's search for identity, the main theme is science and the bioethical oimplications of human manipulation of DNA. How far will you go to save someone you love? How far is it ethically acceptable to go, to save a human life? This book, most of all, raises a lot of questions.
Moreover, it is a beautifully written book, almost poetic in its word choice. As Jenna looks up new words in the dictionary to register their meaning, the reader is also drawn to analyze words more closely and to discover new meanings of these words. Through Jenna's eyes, we learn of a different world, one that could reasonably exist in a not-so-distant future, if scientifical developments go on at today's pace.
Someone named Jenna Fox.
That's what they tell me. But I am more than a name. More than they tell me. More than the fact and statistics they fill me with. More than the video clips they make me watch.
More. But I'm not sure what.
I won The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson from Dewey, and I'm very glad I did. Thank you, Dewey, for sending this book to me!
In fact, I had been coveting this book for some time. The first thing I noticed was the beautiful book cover. What about the butterfly, I wondered, in abook that deals with a girl awakening froma coma? Of course, the butterfly has a meaning, but I'm not going to tell you what it is... too spoilery.
After a terrible car accident, Jenna Fox, a seventeen-year-old girl, awakens from a year-long coma to find out that she doesn't remeber anything of heself or her accident. Jenna doesn't recognize the world she lives in: a new house in a new state, with parents who seem to adore her but control her every movement. Slowly, Jenna starts to leanr things again, and discovers truths her parents want to keep hidden from her--truths that involve her own identity.
This is a science-fiction book set in a not-so-distant future.. I used to dislike science fiction, but after reading this book, I think I might give this genre another chance. Here is how Jenna describes her world in the first pages of the book:
The accident was over a year ago. I've been awake for two weeks. Over a year has vanished. I've gone from sixteen to seventeen. A second woman has been elected president. A twelfth planet has been named in the solar system. The last wild polar bear has died, Headline news that could not stir me. I slept through it all.
Besides Jenna's search for identity, the main theme is science and the bioethical oimplications of human manipulation of DNA. How far will you go to save someone you love? How far is it ethically acceptable to go, to save a human life? This book, most of all, raises a lot of questions.
Moreover, it is a beautifully written book, almost poetic in its word choice. As Jenna looks up new words in the dictionary to register their meaning, the reader is also drawn to analyze words more closely and to discover new meanings of these words. Through Jenna's eyes, we learn of a different world, one that could reasonably exist in a not-so-distant future, if scientifical developments go on at today's pace.
bookwyrm76's review against another edition
5.0
I loved this book. It was really good at making you think about how far you would go to save/keep someone you love. It also made you think about what makes a person themselves.
If your looking for doing it in a book group, it would pair fantastically well with Skinned by Wasserman. When stripped to the basics the books are a lot alike, but the two authors took the story in two totally different directions.
If your looking for doing it in a book group, it would pair fantastically well with Skinned by Wasserman. When stripped to the basics the books are a lot alike, but the two authors took the story in two totally different directions.
eesh25's review against another edition
3.0
The Adoration of Jenna Fox is about a girl, Jenna Fox, who has just woken up from a coma of a year and a half after being in an accident, and doesn't have her memory. She lives with her parents and her grandmother, Lily. She's struggling to find herself and feels that something just isn't right with her.
There's a mystery element surrounding the novel, and I found that, and the premise of the book, to be very interesting. But it doesn't live up to the intrigue that the description promises.
The mystery is three-part. The first part of it I mostly guessed, the second part, surrounding the accident, was relatively minor (to me) and I didn't really care about it. The third part simply didn't make sense to me. I'm sure it was supposed to be a big deal, but I couldn't get past that fact that it was not at all believable. It either needed to be something else or needed a better explanation because it was a significant aspect of the novel. Basically, the mystery was not accomplished well.
The writing was okay at first, but it became tedious. It was quite dull to begin with and then having to put up with Jenna's internal angst-philosophy monologues got exhausting.
The book was quite uneventful. It kinda feels like nothing happened, or nothing that really mattered, anyway. I was surprised that a dystopian, standalone this short still managed to be boring, but I shouldn't have been. Mary E. Pearson is very good at ultra-slow pacing; if anyone could do it, she could. Though I expected more from her when it came to the romance, which in this case was forced, hurried and didn't even need to be there.
But while the story isn't exciting, it isn't all bad either. It's just smaller and more personal. There's no big villain to defeat, just a girl dealing with a peculiar identity crisis. I have to give props to Pearson for attempting that.
The real saving grace of the novel, though, was Lily. She was a character that I liked. She was bold and strong and I also liked her relationship with Jenna. It was nice to see their interactions and how their relationship developed. That was easily the best part of the book and the thing that kept me reading. The three stars are for Lily.
Overall, the concept was interesting but the book itself was not. I wouldn't recommend it. And after reading the synopsis of the second book and finding out that it's based on the part I found to be unrealistic, I doubt I'll be continuing with the series.
a1ice_booklover's review against another edition
hopeful
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
I didn't like this book very much at all. I read it for a book club so I had to finish it, but it wasn't very good. I felt like the characters weren't very well developed. And to me and my other book club members, we felt like the author was trolling us or something. On page 212, Jenna said, "I'm not like other girls." which was so goofy that we decided to quote it in our presentation on the book. Also, it felt like the author had a list iof a ton of things she wanted to happen in one book, and so she stuffed them all in and it was so random I could never tell what was going to happen, and NOT in a good way. For an example in the ending when Allys parents came to tell them that Allys was dying, it felt so random. Especially after something kind of big had just happened. And then all of a sudden two hundred and sixty years later everything is so happy. It felt like the rest of the book was just ignored and the author gave up. The book was supposed to be dystopian but there weren't very many dystopian parts of it. Jenna is a pick-me, and it's annoying, maybe that was the goal or something but it just wasn't for me.
jbridges99's review against another edition
4.0
I enjoyed this book. I had bought this for my son from his HS summer reading list. He never read it and so when cleaning out his closet and finding it, I decided to read it. It was a little predictable in that I could figure out what was going to happen before it did but it was well written and kept my attention.
lebenamlimit's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
3.75
cutenanya's review against another edition
3.0
To sum up this story in one sentence : the ending conflicts the whole story!