The Fox Inheritance (The Fox Chronicles #2) – Mary E. Pearson

Title: The Fox Inheritance (The Fox Chronicles #2) by Mary E. Pearson
Publishing Info: August 30, 2011 by Macmillan
Source: Received from the publisher for review purposes
Genres: Science Fiction, Young Adult
Find it on the web: Buy from Amazon // GoodreadsDate Completed: February 9, 2013
Related Posts: The Adoration of Jenna Fox (Fox Chronicles #1), Fox Forever (The Fox Chronicles #3), The Kiss of Deception (The Remnant Chronicles #1)

   Once there were three. Three friends who loved each other—Jenna, Locke, and Kara. And after a terrible accident destroyed their bodies, their three minds were kept alive, spinning in a digital netherworld. Even in that disembodied nightmare, they were still together. At least at first. When Jenna disappeared, Locke and Kara had to go on without her. Decades passed, and then centuries.   
    Two-hundred-and-sixty years later, they have been released at last. Given new, perfect bodies, Locke and Kara awaken to a world they know nothing about, where everyone they once knew and loved is long dead.
    Everyone except Jenna Fox.

Warning: There are some spoilers if you haven’t read the first book!

Sadly, I was less than impressed with the second book of The Fox Chronicles. I think what made book one so interesting was that I had no idea what was going on with Jenna until the big reveal. Here, we already know the technology that brought Jenna back from near-death and now it’s been perfected for Locke and Kara. I didn’t find many exciting moments despite our two main characters being on the run for most of the book and maybe that’s also because I didn’t find the main characters to be exciting at all either.

I almost felt like this should have been a book to be told from alternating point of views. We’re so into the heads of Kara and Locke, but everything comes from Locke, who I personally found to be flat and boring. I didn’t feel a lot of his personality come out in the book at all. Plus, he has this weird love triangle going on with Jenna and Kara, being in love with both of them at once, and Kara’s constant jealousy spiraling through his mind at all times. It was just a little bizarre and Kara’s jealousy was so intense that it was off-putting.

THE FOX INHERITANCE was just so-so for me. I felt like the whole story was a bit unnecessary, if we’re being honest. Since everyone is so into novellas nowadays, I almost feel like this book should have been a short, filler story in between book one and book three (which I’m reading right now and therefore I feel comfortable making that statement). It was a nice transition between the first and third books, but since we jumped from Jenna’s POV into Locke’s – who no one even got a chance to really meet in book one – It was book two syndrome all over again… Lost in a totally different world, completely cut off from the characters and setting of book one.

Locke: I struggled with Locke. I never got to know his character in book one and reading this book didn’t really set out a nice base of a character for me. He was very unsure which made me unsure about him as well. I felt like Locke’s character was all over the place and I could never really figure out what he was supposed to be like, sort of leaving me in the lurch there.
Kara: Kara bothered me. I get that “something” was off about her the whole book and I guess we’re supposed to be bothered a little bit, but again – that’s a time where it would have been nice to know what her original personality was and to actually see the change. Since I never knew her as she was before the accident, I just didn’t like her off the bat and it made it hard for me to ever be on her side.

Library Read

It was an okay read but I wasn’t nearly as captivated as I was with the first book. I am really interested to see how this trilogy closes though!