
Jenny Pox
Author: JL Bryan
Published: July 24, 2010
Links: Goodreads, Amazon (available as Kindle edition)
eBook provided by author for review
Description:
Jenny is a shy, small-town South Carolina girl whose touch spreads a deadly supernatural plague. She can’t touch anyone for long without killing them. Her life is painfully lonely until she meets a boy named Seth with the opposite power, a healing touch. Jenny’s love for Seth brings the wrath of Seth’s beautiful, popular and devious girlfriend, Ashleigh, who secretly wields the most dangerous power of all–the power to inspire love.
Heather’s Thoughts:
The book opens with Jenny as a toddler, learning on her own that she shouldn’t touch any living thing when she plays with a rattle snake. Her father has to wear a special suit for cuddles, but you get a sense of how much her father loves her and what he does to cope with her special needs. Fast forward to her senior year of high school and you find Jenny how she must be to cope, she always wears gloves, pants, long sleeves so no one accidentally touches her skin. Years of this kind of behavior has left her friendless, isolated, and lonely.
Pushy’s Thoughts:
Heather totally nailed it in her review of the book. I definitely thought it would be your standard YA fare, albeit very good, when I started reading it but, yes, a little more than a third into the book we take a turn for the ADULT. Which I really enjoyed. Despite how dark a view on humanity is presented by the characters in Mr. Bryan’s book, I really enjoyed them all, even the truly evil Ashleigh!
And the writing is definitely engaging. It’s such an interesting story and so well written I too was racing back to my kindle to slip back into Jenny’s world.
I do think the ending felt a bit rushed. There were so many open items that towards the end of the book there’s a big information dump, BUT it’s interesting information so you’ll still enjoy reading it. Also, I was a bit bummed that the dark and mysterious secret about Seth’s family didn’t get fully explored. Dare we hope for a sequel???? The word from Mr. Bryan himself is that he is planning to revisit Jenny’s world, so keep your fingers crossed, dear reader!
This is a fascinating story with great characters and lots of action!

Don’t believe us when we say how fantastic this book is? Need some more proof? Well, JL Bryan is giving away the first 40% of the book for FREE on his publisher’s website. That’s the first 12.5 chapters INCLUDING the very non-YA scene Heather refers to. If you can read all of that for free and not be willing to throw JL Bryan the less than $3 it costs to read the rest in eBook format, well, I don’t know what to say. But believe me when I say at $2.39, the Kindle price is SO RIDICULOUSLY WORTH IT.
After you read Jenny Pox, you might want to check out one of Mr. Bryan’s other books. He has two sci-fi/distopian future thrillers: Helix and Dominion, both of which look fantastic and a and interesting, spoofy vampire novel, Mid-afternoon (I’m going to go out on a limb and guess it’s take a stab at that Twilight book with some signature-JL Bryan-irreverent humor).
You can also find him lurking about on Twitter and Goodreads, where he’s currently hosting a contest to give away a copy of Jenny Pox.
So definitely check this awesome author out!
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You convinced me, it's going on my TBR pile.
The Kindle cover I saw on Amazon is significantly different though !
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Glad we were able to sway you, Katheryn L.! We'd love to hear back on what you thought. Yes, the cover on Amazon is the drawing on school paper version, but we adored how depressed and lonely the girl in this cover looks: so Jenny. And how weird does that sound that we loved how depressed and lonely she looks. *sigh*
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Thanks girls. I got this baby sitting in my TBR pile. Can't wait to get to it, and now I'm even more excited after reading this review. 😉
My recent post Review- Shiver
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Thanks for your comments!
Kathryn – It's my fault, we've been monkeying with the covers. Two covers have been designed and I gave the Bookworms the new one, which didn't perform so well (though I liked it). Though I think they prefer this one, too.
Pushy and Missie: thanks!!
My recent post Jenny Pox Reviewed at Bewitched Bookworms- 5 out of 5
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I also just read this book and I loved it. I kept thinking about it long after I was done reading. And all three of the leads were so fleshed out. A lot of times the "mean girl" can be 2-dimensional, but Ashliegh was a full character and her actions made sense.
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That book sounds awesome!!
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