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.