by J.L. Bryan
BOOK DESCRIPTION
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.
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.
The
other books in the Paranormals series--Tommy Nightmare, Alexander
Death, and Jenny Plague-Bringer--are now available on Amazon.
AUTHOR BIO
He is the author of The Paranormals series (Jenny Pox, Tommy Nightmare, Alexander Death) and other books. Fairy Metal Thunder is the first book in his new Songs of Magic series. He lives in Atlanta with his wife Christina, his baby son John, and some dogs and cats.
Website: www.jlbryanbooks.com
Twitter: @jlbryanbooks
REVIEWS
5.0 out of 5 stars Don't
wait as long as I did to read this amazing book! January 11,
2011
Format:Kindle
Edition|Amazon Verified
Purchase
All sorts of people recommended this book to me-friends,
writers, book bloggers, people on Goodreads. I have no idea what took me so long
to finally get to it, because it is just the kind of book I like. I couldn't
read Jenny Pox fast enough!
This book is a lot of different things, not just another paranormal/supernatural romance. There are plenty of grusome images and vivid descriptions to delight a horror lover, plenty of high school antics and cliqueishness for people who like contemporary. There's Southern charm, rednecks, Jesus freaks, old money, mythology, religion, difficult parent/child relationships and yes, a very sweet romance.
The writing was descriptive without being annoyingly so. The dialogue was natural for both teens and people from the South. The characters well-defined.
I just really dug this book and will be first in line for the sequel!
5.0 out of 5 stars Do
you hear that slurping sound? That's me...getting sucked into this
book. January 15, 2011
By Michelle
Format:Kindle
Edition
The three main characters in this story are Jenny, Seth, and
Ashleigh. Each wields a different supernatural power. At first they don't know
this about each other but soon they discover each other's secret. Jenny and Seth
just want a normal life, but Ashleigh has other plans. Their lives are
intertwined more than they realize and eventually Ashleigh's evil intentions are
discovered. Jenny and Seth are the only ones who can stop her.
Jenny is the shy loner -- by necessity. She cannot touch anyone without giving them a disgusting pox or even, ya know...killing them. She has to cover her bare skin even in the summer and wear gloves at all times, hence the cruel "Jenny Mittens" nickname her classmates give her. The first couple of chapters set the stage for how Jenny has grown up living a lonely life, never able to touch or be touched without deadly consequences. I did kind of wonder how she could get through grade school unsupervised without being touched (except for the one incident between her and Ashleigh) and her power being discovered, but I decided to go with the flow and assume she was able to do this.
Seth has the opposite power to Jenny. He can heal with his touch. Their powers seem to cancel each other out and he is the only person Jenny can touch. Seth starts out as a bit of a jerk but you soon realize he is not quite himself because of Ashleigh. He turns out to be stand-up guy. Seth actually likes Jenny, and Ashleigh is none too happy about it.
Ashleigh's power is to make people feel love...love for her or love for each other. She is like an evil and selfish cupid. People become her puppets and she uses this power for her own selfish reasons regardless of the consequences to that person. She is the ultimate mean girl: nasty, manipulative, cruel, devious, power hungry, selfish, and vengeful. She has no remorse and no redeemable qualities. Nothing and nobody will get in her way to get what she wants. She is the character you love to hate.
At 103K words, this is a fairly long novel, but it read very quickly as I was totally absorbed by the story. At one point I had to stop to recharge my ereader and I was impatient to get back to it. There were times when there was more description than I would like as I'm more of a dialogue kinda gal, but it still held my interest. This book is labeled horror and for most of the book I didn't really see it that way, but when you get to the Carrie-like climactic scene you can see why it might be considered horror. It was pretty gross, but given Jenny's power of inflicting an instant plague-like disease on people, it makes sense that it played out this way.
The main characters are in high school and much of the story revolves around the school environment so you might take this as a YA book. However, I would probably recommend this book to the older end of the teen audience or adults as it does have quite a bit of casual drug use and a couple of brief sex scenes.
So, overall I thought this was a well-written and absorbing story. There were actually quite a few typos but I was so into the story that they did not distract me like they usually do. If you like stories with superpowers, high school angst, villainous mean girls, a sweet romance, and a dash of the horrific (and don't mind the gross factor), then you might like this one. Oh, and there's a dog in the story - just icing on the cake! :)
Word Count: approx. 103,000
Jenny is the shy loner -- by necessity. She cannot touch anyone without giving them a disgusting pox or even, ya know...killing them. She has to cover her bare skin even in the summer and wear gloves at all times, hence the cruel "Jenny Mittens" nickname her classmates give her. The first couple of chapters set the stage for how Jenny has grown up living a lonely life, never able to touch or be touched without deadly consequences. I did kind of wonder how she could get through grade school unsupervised without being touched (except for the one incident between her and Ashleigh) and her power being discovered, but I decided to go with the flow and assume she was able to do this.
Seth has the opposite power to Jenny. He can heal with his touch. Their powers seem to cancel each other out and he is the only person Jenny can touch. Seth starts out as a bit of a jerk but you soon realize he is not quite himself because of Ashleigh. He turns out to be stand-up guy. Seth actually likes Jenny, and Ashleigh is none too happy about it.
Ashleigh's power is to make people feel love...love for her or love for each other. She is like an evil and selfish cupid. People become her puppets and she uses this power for her own selfish reasons regardless of the consequences to that person. She is the ultimate mean girl: nasty, manipulative, cruel, devious, power hungry, selfish, and vengeful. She has no remorse and no redeemable qualities. Nothing and nobody will get in her way to get what she wants. She is the character you love to hate.
At 103K words, this is a fairly long novel, but it read very quickly as I was totally absorbed by the story. At one point I had to stop to recharge my ereader and I was impatient to get back to it. There were times when there was more description than I would like as I'm more of a dialogue kinda gal, but it still held my interest. This book is labeled horror and for most of the book I didn't really see it that way, but when you get to the Carrie-like climactic scene you can see why it might be considered horror. It was pretty gross, but given Jenny's power of inflicting an instant plague-like disease on people, it makes sense that it played out this way.
The main characters are in high school and much of the story revolves around the school environment so you might take this as a YA book. However, I would probably recommend this book to the older end of the teen audience or adults as it does have quite a bit of casual drug use and a couple of brief sex scenes.
So, overall I thought this was a well-written and absorbing story. There were actually quite a few typos but I was so into the story that they did not distract me like they usually do. If you like stories with superpowers, high school angst, villainous mean girls, a sweet romance, and a dash of the horrific (and don't mind the gross factor), then you might like this one. Oh, and there's a dog in the story - just icing on the cake! :)
Word Count: approx. 103,000
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