The Adoration of Jenna Fox

In The Adoration of Jenna Fox, author Mary Pearson calls into question what truly makes a human. Is it our inteligence? Our personalities and emotions? Our organs, skin, hair, and physical features?

Main character Jenna wakes up from a coma after an accident with no memories of who she is, where she is from, or what happened to her.  Jenna begins her path to recovery in a secluded house with her mother and grandmother, and occasional visits from her father.  She is aided by home videos, one for every year of her life.  Set in the near future, Jenna's world is extremely similar to ours except for several advances in technology and medicine that enable life-saving procedures, although with ethical concerns and consequences.  As Jenna learns more about herself through the home videos, and her memories start resurfacing, she also makes several startling discoveries about her accident and who she is today because of it.  

One theme of this book is to believe and trust in your instincts.  Even as Jenna struggles to find herself and remember herself, she is driven by her intuition in her actions and interactions with others.  When she meets Ethan, she instinctually knows that he is a good person despite his past actions.  When she finds somethings hidden in locked closet, she follows her gut feelings to discover the truth about her accident.

I really enjoyed reading this book because many of the components that make it sci-fi aren't completely unbelievable or far from what is available in medicine today.  The author raises so many deep thinking questions about the human race, and how far we would go to save and protect the ones we love.