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55 of 66 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A little late to the dystopian party, February 23, 2011
This review is from: Bumped (Hardcover)
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What happens when adults become infertile. When sex-ed is taught in schools to encourage kids to have unprotected sex. When giving birth in middle school increases your chances of getting into the right college. When being 16 and pregnant makes you the most important person in the world. This is the America--in the not so distant future--where identical twins Melody and Harmony grow up. Separated at birth, Melody is taken in by a wealthy New Jersey family while Harmony is raised in a Pennsylvania compound by the Church. Melody's parents want to give her every advantage in life, including a top-paying birthing contract that will allow her to attend the best schools, have all the money she will ever need, and make her the most popular girl in the world. But Harmony is raised to get married, bare children and rear them to serve God. Both are prized for their purity, and neither is quite ready to get bumped. And then they meet. Sounds like a great premise, right? It has drama, sex, conspiracy, religion--all the elements for a really good action-thriller. But it's all slightly misleading. A throw-back to Margret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale set in the consumer-driven world created by Scott Westerfeld in Uglies Trilogy, this book struggles to get off the ground. I spent the first 20 pages confused, the next 60 pages a little offended and the end totally frustrated. The biggest problem is that Melody's character is over-developed while Harmony's totally flat. It's obvious that the author doesn't understand religion, but instead of creating a character that's believable despite being outside the realm of conventional understanding, she makes Harmony walk around sounding like a brainwashed religious zealot. While I consider myself a god-fearing person, I'm not a squeamish reader when it comes to sexuality, strong language and violence, but Harmony--the character I expected to empathize with--ended up annoying me. And her big revelation that should have made me love her came so out of left-field that I felt manipulated by the first half of the book. But that's when things started getting good. The pacing picked up, I got a handle on the slang and the characters started to become likable. Until I realized I wasn't going to gain any satisfaction with the ending. A total cliff-hanger. I'd been sucked into another near-future trilogy with no end in sight, because that's what they do with dystopian books now. They write them in threes without giving you any kind of closure in between novels. So this book joins the stack of books that finally got shorter when The Hunger Games ended only to get longer with Matched, Delirium, Everlost, The Maze Runner...
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating but...., April 13, 2011
This review is from: Bumped (Hardcover)
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I had a hard time writing a review for Bumped. It's one of those books you finish, and then you just aren't sure how you feel.
Whenever these dystopian novels get into the territory of young girls "breeding" it makes me squirm. What is so different about Bumped is that the young girls in question are enthusiastic participants in being "bumped". There is a virus that makes it impossible for anyone over 18 unable to reproduce, so teens are a hot commodity for older couples. They pay teens to be surrogates to keep up with the decline in population.
Not only is teen pregnancy no longer taboo - it is encouraged and celebrated. No condoms allowed. Ads play songs with lyrics like " You're knocked up. Ready to pop. Due to drop" Young girls wear FunBumps so they can feel the joy of being pregnant until they really are. You can make quite a bit of money and most of the teenagers try to ride the wave while they are young enough to get enough money for college.
The story focuses on two twin sisters separated at birth who have just found each other. Melody has been raised to be the perfect baby making machine for the elite couples in society. Her parents provide her with the best education, the best activities & training to keep her in tip top breeding shape. She is a Repro that will get top dollar once her cock-jockey is chosen. Yup - I said cock-jockey....more on the lingo later.
Harmony is the twin that has been raised by an ultra conservative church family. Her mission in life is to spread the Word and save Melody and all the other Repros from their fate. She believes in procreation through marriage which all sounds fantastic but this is a world that is every bit as controlling and brainwashing as Melody's.
Both sisters live in oppressive societies and believe whole heartedly in their respective actions. It's an interesting dichotomy and it works....up to a point. At times I felt that there was a bit of mocking of Harmony's faith and a hope that she would fall a bit from her chosen path of righteousness. I do understand that was not the author's intent but it did come off that way to me a few times.
Megan McCafferty has created such a fascinating and disturbing dystopian world in Bumped yet for some reason I couldn't quite connect to anyone.
The story kind of plunks you right in the middle and I felt like I never got a proper introduction. The language has so much slang specific to this world that it takes a while to be able to understand it. I found it very distracting at first. Almost everything is explained but often 3 or 4 chapters later and I was left confused in the meantime as to what the hell anyone was talking about. Maybe I'm just too old to read this book. It seemed that there wasn't one word in the English language that was spared. Negative is neggy, preggy instead of pregnant, a boy you would have sex with but not procreate with is an everythingbut, you're fertilicious instead of fertile and there are massSEX parties. I could go on and on. Again I know she is going for satire and full immersion into this dystopian world. It felt just too self consciously hip at times for me. McCafferty has said she was inspired by the recent spat of MTV teenage pregnancy shows and admittedly I don't like watching any of them so maybe that's why I didn't enjoy reading about it either. Her writing is good and it's a good story - I'm just not sure it was the book for me.
Then the last 1/3 of the book rolled around and I was glued to the pages. Finally it seemed that all the threads of the story started coming together, there was quite a bit of action and both sisters came to some big realizations. Although it took me awhile to get into Bumped, I do think I will be checking out the second book.
I think this is going to be one of those polarizing books that you either "get it" or you don't. I'm still not sure what side I stand on.
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14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
BUMP this one off your To Be Read List..., May 7, 2011
This review is from: Bumped (Hardcover)
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Bumped.
What can I say about BUMPED? Compared the wonderful other dystopian titles that have been released this year, BUMPED, well should be BUMPED, right off the shelf. Rilly, rilly. This book was for shock value only, a controversial topic was picked, expounded upon but was not taken to a logical conclusion. It was all window dressing with no heart or soul. The concept was interesting but the implementation was mind-numbingly vapid. Yet, the whole time I was reading it was like a train-wreck - I just couldn't stop, no matter how bad it was.
In the future of BUMPED adults over the age of 20, because of some widely spread disease were infertile. It became the patriotic thing to do for teenagers to get pregnant and hand over their babies for adoption. Yet, as the evil consumers got a hold of the phenomenon they began to profit on birthing. Hence, Pros and Ams were born. Pros are girls that are sponsored by couples desperate for children. Their "sperm" is chosen for them and they are given money to stay pristine until their optimal conception time when the hired sperm steps in and they BUMP. Purely professional. Then their are the Ams, the amateurs who just BUMP with their boyfriends, or in orgy parties, or just with random optimal sperm donors around their school.
Melody has been primed for her PRO position since she was a newborn. Her parents, economist rightly guessed the way the world was heading and prepped their perfectly adopted child to be a high grossing baby making machine. They just didn't expect for Melody's identical twin sister to show up in her godreak attire and change Melody's whole world.
All I can say is that someone was watching a little too many Sixteen and Pregnant on MTv and came up with this book. Complete train wreck. Let's write a book with a lot of sex talk, religious talk and consumerism talk - squish it all together in one controversial read and let everything sort itself out in the end. I surprised they didn't pair it with a little global warming - you know maybe that could have been the reason for the infertility.
Dislikes -
The vapid future speak, works like bump, preggy, rilly, it was forced and halfway through a paragraph I would be completely confused because I wasn't following all the trendy jive and then it would smooth down into normal speak
How everything was so extreme - the religious twin was dressed from head to foot and even in a veil, they had fake pregnancy bumps that tweens would wear around because it was cool to be pregnant. Seemed a bit unrealistic.
The fact that this wasn't really a dystopian. Melody was railing against an ideology instead of a ruling body.
It was like Brave New World meets Tila Tequlia.
There was just really no plot, just a lot of controversial topics.
Likes -
The idea was original.
I can't recommend this book. I also do not recommend this for teens. And it is not about the sex or the cursing or the hinting at racism, orgies, and blatant materialistic behavior. No, it is none of those things. It was the fact that all of those things are included in this book, but there is no definitive message interlaced in with these things to counteract the negative messages. Yes, in the end Melody railed against the box she was placed within - but it wasn't because she had her own way of thinking and needed to express herself. No, it was because of the actions of other people around her. In the end she made the right decision because of choices other people made for her, not because of herself. It just painted a bad picture and I don't think this is suitable for young consumption.
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