Amanda Hocking

If you’ve been following Zombiepalooza this year (or last year for that matter), you’ll have seen posts from J. L. Bryan. (Here’s last year’s bog post if you’re interested – here), and this was his post just last week. He’s currently on A Parnormals Blog tour promoting his Paranormals Trilogy that includes Jenny Pox, Tommy Nightmare, and Alexander Death. There’s actually a ton of cool things going on with the tour, including a giveaway for a free Kindle Fire (which looks REALLY bad ass), so you should totally check out the Paranormals Tour info: here.

Also, in related fun news, Jenny Pox is currently free for the Kindle. Yeah. You heard me. Free. And since Jeff has no control when Amazon makes it not free anymore, you should hurry up and pick it up while you have the chance.

I do have a really awesome giveaway for a signed paperback of Jenny Pox, too, and the details will follow closer to the end of the blog. But first, I figured I ought to tell you what this Jenny Pox is that I keep talking about.

Well, Jenny Pox is one of my favorite books I read last year. In fact, if you exclude graphic and books I’ve read for the second (or third, or fourth time), then I’d say Jenny Pox was the best book I read last year. Yeah. That’s how much I loved it.

Here’s the description of it I’ve pilfered from Amazon: Jenny’s touch spreads a deadly supernatural plague. She can’t control her power, so she devotes her life to avoiding contact with other people in her small Southern town. Her senior year of high school, she meets the one boy she can touch…but if she’s going to be with him, Jenny must learn to use the “Jenny pox” inside her to survive his devious, manipulative girlfriend, who secretly wields the most dangerous power of all. Not recommended for readers under eighteen.*

But here’s what I say about it (and then I’ll come back to the bolded * part in a minute): It’s a really good book. I stayed up all night reading it. I met Jeff (or J.L. Bryan to you non-D-list celebrities) in a message board, and I liked the cover of his book, so I bought it. A few weeks later, I just decided to check it out and see if it sucked or not. And it did not suck. It didn’t suck it all. It was awesome.

He reminds me of Stephen King, but funnier. Jeff actually is a terrifically funny guy, and while I wouldn’t exactly describe Jenny Pox as funny, it definitely has it moments. And it’s really, really smart. It’s sorta like Carrie, but honestly, I think it’s a lot better. (Full disclosure: Carrie isn’t in my top ten Stephen King books. Salem’s Lot is, though, and I’d say Jenny Pox is right up there with that).

It also has touches of Alyson Noel Evermore, which in mind is why it felt like a YA paranormal romance. I do think Jenny Pox is definitely a paranormal romance but the YA part has been – and probably should be – disputed.

And now we come back to the * bold part. This book is not recommended for readers under 18. When Jeff wrote this book, he wasn’t writing a paranormal romance or a young adult book. He was writing a horror novel. He didn’t think of his audience being teenagers, so he put in some graphic content that he felt served the book best.

With that said, I think the overall storyline is fine for teenagers. When I was in high school, I was reading Stephen King and Michael Crichton, and there was things far more graphic in them, and I survived. However, as always, I suggest that parents read the books themselves and make the decisions for their children accordingly.

I’m making a big deal of pointing this out because the only negative reviews Jeff is getting on Jenny Pox are about the graphic content and how it’s not a young adult book. And Jeff agrees with you. He never said it was a young adult book. I did. So it’s my fault, and I’m sorry for misleading you.

Okay. Now that I’ve talked about it enough, here’s the give away details for a signed paperback of Jenny Pox:

1. One winner will win an autographed copy of Jenny Pox.
2. The giveaway runs from today until midnight on Friday, October 31, 2011.
3. To enter: Comment below and with a way to contact you in case you win (email addresses work best).
4. Only one entry per person.
5. Winner will be chosen by Random.org.

Don’t forget to snag a free Kindle version of Jenny Pox while you can and check out J. L. Bryan’s super rad Paranormals Tour. Also, you can check out his website www.jlbryanbooks.com for more info his books and himself, and follow him on Twitter, because he’s funny.