Jenny Pox (The Paranormals Book 1)

I often check the free kindle books for something to read.  Often, I’m disappointed but when I bought Jenny Pox (The Paranormals, Book One) by JL Bryan, I wasn’t.  Jenny Pox is about Jenny Morton, or Jenny Mittens as she is known at school, who has a gift/curse where any times she touches someone else she gives them a disease and if the contact was long enough it kills them.  So Jenny goes through life, wearing gloves and avoiding contact with animals or humans until one day she finds her opposite.  Someone who heals instead of kills with their touch.  Someone she can touch without hurting them.  The description had me hooked.

I liked this book a lot, I liked the characters though Jenny does make a behavioral change in the middle of the book that seems awful abrupt, but looking back, it also made sense when I got to my favorite part of the book.  The characters are very life-like; in fact, I wanted to strangle Ashleigh several times.  Okay, more like the entire book but I’ve known too many people similar to her in that they claim to be perfect little Christians but are far from it.  To me a good book will give you a full range of emotions when you read it and this did it.  This book is definitely for those over 18 years old, though, as there is some sex and at least one incredibly strange sexual favor.  If you read it you’ll know which one I’m talking about and all I’ll say here is Ashleigh you are one sick puppy.

On Goodreads someone said that the book was horror rather than paranormal, a review which I hadn’t seen until I was more than halfway through the book and finally remembered to add it to my “currently reading”.  After finishing I thought yes, there were some horror-esque parts but I don’t think it’s enough to classify it as horror as I am really not into horror at all and those scenes that could classify it as such didn’t put me off enough to stop reading.  Not that this a huge thing, but I think it’s worth mentioning.  Do with it what you will.

The only problems I had with Jenny Pox was that the sex scenes weren’t what I’m used to, but keep in mind I read some pretty steamy stuff, as in needing a cold shower after reading, kind of steamy.  There was also what seemed like some foreshadowing that didn’t turn out to be anything; however there are 2 more books and the author just announced a 4^th is due to be released this fall, so maybe it will turn up again.  Or maybe I was just hoping it would turn out to be something more.

As I’ve said, I liked the book a lot but when I got to the last few chapters, I fell in love.  Hard.  Spoiler but not really as I don’t give details: you find out where Jenny, Ashleigh & Seth’s powers come from and I got chills and giggled with glee.  I may have rolled around the floor with weird little shouts of excitement as well.  I absolutely love it and wasn’t at all expecting it.  I’m super excited to get the sequel.

tl;dr I recommend it!!

Be sure to check out JL Bryan’swebsite for his other books and follow him on twitter!