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One of the delight­ful things about get­ting ARCs is being among the first read­ers to lay hands on a remark­able book and then hav­ing the plea­sure of shout­ing from the moun­tain­tops about this exquis­ite thing you’ve found (or, um, had mailed to you). It must be the same feel­ing that edi­tors get when an “it” man­u­script crosses their desks.

THE ADORATION OF JENNA FOX is that kind of book.

The story starts many years in the future as Jenna Fox wakes up from a year-long coma. Her par­ents have moved her from frigid Boston to warm Cal­i­for­nia, where they live in a ram­shackled house in what’s left of a neigh­bor­hood after a post-apocalyptical earth­quake. Jenna is liv­ing an apoc­a­lypse of her own. She has no mem­ory of her pre­vi­ous life. She has no friends, no sense of home, no rela­tion­ships with any­one other than her par­ents and grand­mother. But Jenna does sense that something’s amiss. Her par­ents are tip-lipped about the acci­dent that put her in a coma. She hears voices of peo­ple who don’t exist. She’s not allowed to leave the house alone. She’s not allowed to eat or drink, either. And there’s that locked room upstairs that seems to hold answers to her many questions–answers that her par­ents don’t want her to have.

I’ve just skimmed the sur­face of this brilliantly-plotted novel, for fear that I’ll give away too many story ele­ments. Mary Pear­son is able to weave ele­ments of mys­tery, ecol­ogy, biotech­nol­ogy, and sci­en­tific ethics while wow­ing with a strong-voiced main char­ac­ter who has us root­ing for her every step of the way.

If you’ve got an ARC of this one, put it on the top of your stack. You won’t be sorry.