Review: Bumped by Megan McCafferty

Bumped by Megan McCafferty

Summary: When a virus makes everyone over the age of eighteen infertile, would-be parents pay teen girls to conceive and give birth to their children, making teens the most prized members of society. Girls sport fake baby bumps and the school cafeteria stocks folic-acid-infused food.

Sixteen-year-old identical twins Melody and Harmony were separated at birth and have never met until the day Harmony shows up on Melody's doorstep. Up to now, the twins have followed completely opposite paths. Melody has scored an enviable conception contract with a couple called the Jaydens. While they are searching for the perfect partner for Melody to bump with, she is fighting her attraction to her best friend, Zen, who is way too short for the job.

Harmony has spent her whole life in Goodside, a religious community, preparing to be a wife and mother. She believes her calling is to convince Melody that pregging for profit is a sin. But Harmony has secrets of her own that she is running from.

When Melody is finally matched with the world-famous, genetically flawless Jondoe, both girls' lives are changed forever. A case of mistaken identity takes them on a journey neither could have ever imagined, one that makes Melody and Harmony realize they have so much more than just DNA in common.

Review: A dystopian novel with a hard to believe premise and decent characters.

I know that we have to swallow a lot of unbelievable premises in dystopian fiction, but some are more unbelievable than others. What I find more important than the premise is how well the premise is executed. I always hold all dystopian novels up to 1984, which might be unfair, but 1984 is one of my favorite novels so I do it anyways. I can certainly believe a virus that made everyone over 18 infertile, but I could not take the whole culture that came around because of it seriously. The slang didn't help either. It should either been taken out or toned down. A glossary would have been nice too.

The characters were extreme opposites of each other and I felt like they were plot devices used by the author to show how different the two cultures were and how they would clash. There was a lot of stupidity and blindly following by both characters, especially Harmony, but they do manage to come into their own beliefs by the end of the book. Since the book is told in 1st person by both twins, I find it hard to believe that the duplicity of the one twin wouldn't have entered her thoughts. I am interested to read the second book and see how everything develops between the twins.

Rating:







Recommendation: I would recommend this book to fans of young adult dystopian fiction who don't mind a rather wacky premise.