Bumped

Bumped

By Megan McCafferty

Publishing Date: April 26th, 2011

I just finished the book and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I don’t even know know where to start. I have loved all of Megan McCafferty’s books. I have read her Jessica Darling books several times and have loved them immensely. I had no idea Miss McCafferty would come up with something this different from her other books.

Just be warned that this is not like any of her other books. It is dark, kind of disturbing in places, and really makes you think.

The book is about two sisters, Melody and Harmony, who have lived completely different lives finally meeting up and how everything ends up changing.

Melody grows up believing that getting bumped is the only important thing that can happen to her, because society has become infertile after the age of 18 due to a Virus that has been plaguing man kind for decades. It will get her in into the college she wants, to live a life that is her own. Her parents are never there and have pushed her into being the perfect possible pregger - intelligent, athletic, artsy, and has a perfect resume to a potential client who wants her to bump for them. The only thing they aren’t happy about is that the couple that she is contracted with hasn’t picked a bump mate yet. To Melody she isn’t in that big of a hurry to get bumped, yet she is starting to feel the pressure to get pregged from the other girls at school. Besides the drama from not being bumped yet, is her twin sister Harmony showing up at her house.

Harmony grew up completely opposite of Melody. Harmony is known as a churchfreak. She grew up in a cloistered community where the bible is taught and applied strictly. They are completely sheltered there and rarely go to the Otherside, where they use sex for money. However Harmony doesn’t think that is all there is over there and wants to find out for herself.

Once Harmony gets over to Otherside she has a hard time understanding what people are saying and feels she needs to witness to the sinners, helping them find their way to God. The more she finds out about her new sister and the new world around her, she comes to realize that she does not want to go back to Goodside, where her secrets and strict beliefs are.

Finally Melody gets matched with the most sought after mate, Jondoe. Only the news gets delivered to Harmony by mistake, and she has a hard time telling him that she isn’t Melody. The deeper Harmony gets into the lie the more Melody finds out about Harmony’s past and starts to analyze her feelings for her best friend Zen.

Over all the book was very well written and it really took on a different side of teen pregnancy. It is a side of it that is disturbing and something that I hope never comes to pass. Where the world pushes for young kids to have unprotected sex as early as possible, along with mass orgies or mass semination parties.

I have to admit that at first I wasn’t sure that I would like the book at all. The first couple of pages where kind of hard to get through. The language and slang was really hard to understand and having the shortened names of which sister was talking at the time was confusing. I understand that it was taking place in 2035, but I am not sure that they would talk that different 20 years from now.

Once I got in the swing of how the flow of the book was, it took me no time in order to read it. It only took me about 2 hours to get through it. It was a very nice quick read.

The ending however left you really hanging. I honestly didn’t like it and kind of pissed me off. It left me feeling like something was missing and nothing got completely resolved. Then I found out that it a first book in a series, so now it makes more sense.

Anyway, the book was great, but still up in the air if I love it. So I have to give it four out of five stars.