Books4Tomorrow: QUICK REVIEW: "Jenny Pox" (The Paranormals, Book One)

“JENNY POX”

(The Paranormals, Book One)

by J.L. Bryan

REVIEWED BY: Books4Tomorrow

OVERVIEW

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.

BONUS: Includes an excerpt of Glimpse by Stacey Wallace Benefiel.

REVIEW

I’ll come straight out and say it. This book blew me away. The first time I came across it on Amazon’s free downloads, I read the blurb and wasn’t impressed. Needles to say, I didn’t even bother downloading it. A few weeks later, one of my colleagues at work raved about this book and pretty much begged me to download it. Begrudgingly I did, and because said colleague and I share the same taste in certain genres of books, I started reading it right away.

The first thing that impressed me about “Jenny Pox” is how remarkably well author J.L. Bryan portrays his characters – each shaped with a true-to-life personality. The two main female leads are at complete opposite ends of the spectrum – one perfectly good and the other perfectly evil. It’s been a long while since I came across an antagonist whom I hated as passionately as I did this one.

But let me backtrack a little here. This book has three main characters, each with an extraordinary paranormal power and all of them with different back stories. My first impression when I read the blurb was that this was going to be another standard YA novel with loads of teenage angst and soppy romance. Four chapters into the book I could already tell that this was not going to be the case at all.

Jenny is a fantastic character! I loved her right from the start. Her “power” is such an inimitable and unusual one. She spent most of her life fearing and hiding it, but once she takes control of it, she kicks some serious butt. Ashleigh, on the other hand, is the complete opposite of Jenny. She’s rich, popular, shockingly manipulative, and has a power I think most of us would kill to have. Yet, she uses hers for evil. She is one of those antagonists you just love to hate. J.L. Bryan did an outstanding job pitting these two girls’ strengths and weaknesses against each other, whilst at the same time making it easy for the reader to root for one and despise the other.

Of course Seth also needs a mention here. At first I didn’t know what to make of his character – should I love him or hate him? Another few chapters into the book, I decided I definitely like him; especially after I came to that part in the book about his one-of-a-kind power and how he uses it to save lives. Not only that, he’s also really nice, handsome, caring, rich, nice, handsome…..oh sorry, got carried away.

“The Paranormals” is an addictive new series which I will be enthusiastically raving about for months to come! I already got books two and three in this series long before I was half way through the first. Take my word for it. Once you’ve read the first book in this superhot new series, you won’t be able to resist reading anything written by J.L. Bryan.

Although this book is written with the YA reader in mind, it contains explicit content and therefore has an age restriction of 18.