“You’re murderers,” she told the stunned crowd. “You killed him. He was a miracle, and you killed him. Now you’ve just got me. And I’m a curse.”

Is it even possible to give a 4.75? If not… Well, bear with me. Because I’ve done it! Breaking the rules, over here…

Jenny Pox is a story about a girl who, when she touches another living thing with her bare skin, infects them with a plague. In order to combat this, Jenny always wears long sleeves and gloves. Her manner of dressing has earned her the ridicule of the most popular girl in school, Ashleigh, who has taken to calling her Jenny Mittens.

This book has a little bit of everything: high school bullying, sex, drugs, teen pregnancy, manipulative young adults, magic, cheerleaders, and emotional roller coasters throughout. When I started reading it, I was in tears by chapter four; I connected immediately with Jenny (except for the whole plague thing…) and I understood the pain of being completely ostracized from the people around you.

Jenny Pox also deals with some fairly heavy subjects, such as the death of a loved one and revenge upon those who have wronged you. The book makes you care for Jenny and the boy that she falls for, hoping that they’ll come up on top and devastated when things begin to unravel for them.

The romance aspect of this book is very sweet, though I must say that there are a couple sex scenes depicted with nothing left out. While the terms used are not overly graphic, in any sense, I would suggest that parents read this book before their children do, so they can decide if it’s appropriate.

I was a little surprised by the end of the book, which seems to wrap itself together very neatly at the end. This surprised me because I know there are two more books in the series; I had hoped for a cliffhanger that would leave me with absolutely no option but to download the next book immediately. While I did not feel any of that, chances are high that I will be downloading the next book… If for no other reason than I’m intrigued to find out what will happen next.

You’re probably wondering about the .25 in the score. If I gave it such a good review, what happened? I noticed two grammatical errors in the Kindle edition of this book. Which, for a self-published book, is fantastic. To be honest, that was the part I worried about most with downloading a free, self-published book; the grammatical and formatting errors. This book assuaged those fears completely. I’m definitely looking forward to taking the chance on a few more books like this.

Books two and three in The Paranormals series, Tommy Nightmare and Alexander Death, are both available through the Amazon Kindle, the Nook and Smashwords.

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By Kit

When Kit was younger, she wanted nothing more than to be a princess. Instead, she was a plain girl with an evil older brother who liked to push her out of tree houses. After coming to terms with the fact that she would probably never be whisked away by a queen who was, in fact, her mother, Kit began to delve into the realms of fantasy as a means of escape. Now, Kit still enjoys reading fantasy novels, but has also occasionally enjoyed some historical fiction, horror, and sci-fi. Her favorite authors include Terry Goodkind, Anne Bishop, and Peter V. Brett. When she’s not reading, Kit is a paralegal at a small law firm, and an aspiring photographer. She holds an AS in Paralegal Studies from Husson University in Bangor, Maine. Kit currently lives in the Pacific Northwest, where it isn’t quite as rainy as people think it is. She enjoys tea more than she probably ought to, and desires a cat more than anything else. Her favorite pastime is curling up with a book on a rainy day, with a hot cup of tea and a homemade cookie.

4 thoughts on “Jenny Pox by J. L. Bryan”
  1. I scanned through this from Dan D Jones’ link, and sorry it read like a trite Twilight esque novel, and worst of all I stumbled across an appallingly bad sex scene. The highlight was the female protagonist “feeling something hot exploding inside the trojan”. Maybe I am being unfair, and it is a book which needs to be read cover from cover, but the bits I read didn’t promise much …

  2. Gotta disagree with this one, but everyone’s got an opinion, right? 🙂

    I felt that the longer this book went on, the worse the writing got. Totally fell apart for me by the end. It was bad enough that I didn’t review it on my site because I was just starting out and didn’t want to try to write a negative review as my first post.

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