The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson (Holt, $16.95, 9780805076684/0805076689, 272 pp., ages 14-up, April)
Pearson (A Room on Lorelei Street) begins laying out her mystery from the first line: "I used to be someone. Someone named Jenna Fox." Readers quickly learn that the 17-year-old narrator was in an accident, which led to her being in a coma for a year. With the help of home movies, Jenna begins to remember things. Then she recalls other experiences that are not in the movies. A dark place where there are no words. The author's pacing is impeccable as she builds the tensions among characters with details that do not always add up for Jenna: Why is her grandmother so cold when Jenna has memories of warmth between them? Why do her parents try to keep her away from school and from meeting people outside their home? And what really caused the accident that put her in a coma? Jenna's contact with the outside world begins to provide clues to the answers, and readers put them together right along with her. She begins to build new friendships--and falls in love. Although the events take place in a future not so far from our own, where medical miracles are possible, the questions Jenna raises are essential to adolescents of any era: Who am I really and who do I want to be? How can I be who I want to be and not hurt my parents? (In one prescient comment, referring to her mother, Jenna says, "It is like we are both fighting for control of Jenna Fox.") But it is how the heroine handles the discovery of her truth that will make readers adore her, perhaps nearly as much as her parents do. Pearson takes us on a remarkable, often chilling journey in which Jenna questions what makes life worth living and comes out the other side victorious.--Jennifer M. Brown
