The Fox Inheritance by Mary E. Pearson

This is another ARC (courtesy of Henry Holt and Company –An imprint of Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group) at ALA New Orleans. The actual book comes out August 31^st so you don’t have much of a wait on it. And, oh my there is a blurb from Suzanne Collins on this cover...my ARC version is missing that quote at the top!

I finally had an excuse to put The Adoration of Jenna Fox at the top of my reading pile, and I really liked it, but did not seem to be quite as in love with it as the rest of the world (as you can see in my previous post). Mostly, my complaint was that Jenna was too whiny of a character for me to like her as much as I could. This book, the sequel, has all the suspense/mystery of the first and none of the whining. I loved it.

The book is told in the point of view of Locke, and follows Locke and Kara (Jenna’s two friends who “died” in the car crash with her). After knowing what it felt like to be trapped in a small black box for a year, Jenna destroyed the boxes that secretly held her two friends in book 1. Her parents told her that the technology wasn’t available yet to save them, but that it might be one day. Jenna decided no possible future technology was worth the suffering and loneliness she endured in that waiting period. She didn’t want them to suffer for so long. Clearly, Jenna was not aware of other copies of her friends…And her poor besties were only put into human bodies (of almost exact likeness to their past selves) 260 years later.

Unfortunately, the person with the technology to revive them is a jerk, who uses Locke and Kara to sell a product, a product that promises eternal youth to possible investors. The two friends escape, make friends with robots (who have a very interesting political side plot), go through some intense, futuristic chase scenes, and go to find Jenna, who they know to be alive and who they are told gave up on them. Kara’s intentions, whether Locke would like to believe so or not, always seemed to be to attack Jenna. And Locke deals with his love for Jenna that began before the cursed car crash and Kara’s intelligent, yet dark interpretations of everything.

There’s a lot of politics in this one. And like with book 1, there’s this overwhelming sense of creepiness. Like Jenna, Locke has to deal with the fact that he is his past self, yet isn’t. And he goes through his own identity crisis. And while Kara right away is clearly missing something of her humanity, I also can’t help but feel for her too and all that she’s been through. The book plays with heavy topics about things like what it means to be human, the world always needing someone to persecute, and the concept of forgiveness.  

Pearson has explained a lot more of the accident with this book. Her characters are amazing. And I’m really glad she continued Jenna’s story and I was able to see a much wiser, less whinier Jenna. The ending left a little to be desired, but all in all I really enjoyed this book, and read it super fast. If you liked the first one, by all means, pick this one up. I give it a 9/10.