Bumped [Hardcover]

Megan McCafferty (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 26, 2011

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.

From New York Times bestselling author Megan McCafferty comes a strikingly original look at friendship, love, and sisterhood—in a future that is eerily believable.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“McCafferty proves that— dystopias don’t have to be dreary to be provocative.” (Publishers Weekly )

“Bumped has plenty to say about reproductive rights and girls’ place in society.” (ALA Booklist )

“Bumped is wonderfully original, with an extremely well thought-out dystopian society...McCafferty’s future echoes just enough of current events to seem chillingly possible.” (Romantic Times )

“Its central characters become voices of reason while everyone around them acts content with their questionable circumstances.” (MTV.com's Page Turners blog )

“BUMPED is brilliant, innovative, and slightly terrifying. Megan McCafferty delivers!” (Carolyn Mackler, author of TANGLED and the Printz-Honor-book, THE EARTH, MY BUTT, AND OTHER BIG ROUND THINGS )

“Megan McCafferty has conceived a hilarious, touching, truly original novel, told in her trademark, spot-on voice. Readers of every age will delight in this new arrival.” (Rachel Cohn, bestselling author of NICK & NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST )

About the Author

Megan McCafferty is the author of Bumped as well as the New York Times bestselling Jessica Darling series, which includes Sloppy Firsts, Second Helpings, Charmed Thirds, Fourth Comings, and Perfect Fifths. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey, with her family.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Balzer + Bray; 1st Edition/ 1st Printing edition (April 26, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9780061962745
• ISBN-13: 978-0061962745
• ASIN: 0061962740
• Product Dimensions: 1.1 x 5.7 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (197 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #765,989 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

63 of 75 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars A little late to the dystopian party February 23, 2011

By Kathryn Gaglione

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

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... Read more ›

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating but.... April 13, 2011

By Karen VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

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. Read more ›

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars "Future Words" a world don't make May 28, 2011

By E. M. Rhudy

Format:Hardcover

Megan McCafferty's Bumped has been getting hype up the wazoo. I've heard almost nothing but good things about it - you know, good world building, topical issues, young adult dystopian (which instantly makes me think of The Hunger Games - I expect every YA dystopian novel to be as good as Suzanne Collins's, I guess), inventive language - and I was practically drooling thinking of reading this book.

Only, then I got it, and I found that the things everyone was talking about and praising, like the way McCafferty doesn't do an "info dump" at the start of her novel to explain her world and the lives and vocabulary of her characters, drove me nuts. Sure, giving a chapter of exposition isn't the most gripping way to open a novel, but not everyone can pull off making this information an organic part of their story. Then there are some people who don't even try, at all - and as a reader it felt to me that McCafferty gave up on building a strong world, resting her story instead of the questionable strengths of its storyline and wacky vocabulary.

Bumped takes place in a vaguely future version of our world, in which an AIDS-like virus causes most men and women to become infertile once out of their teens. Teenagers thereby become responsible for the propagation of the human race, "bumping" as amateurs or professionals to produce babies that are adopted or purchased by older couples. Pregnancy isn't just a way of life but a fashion; girls can purchase not just t-shirts about "pregging" and being "fertilicious" but fake baby bumps to wear.

McCafferty's narrative flips back and forth between Melody and Harmony, sixteen-year-old identical twins separated at birth who have grown up in cultures that treat teenage pregnancy differently.... Melody has grown up in "Otherside", as Harmony calls it, raised by parents who believe in the move to monetize pregnancy. She's the first girl in her school to turn "professional", though two years after signing her contract she hasn't "bumped" and is nearing obsolescence.

Harmony grew up in "Goodside", a strict community of "Godfreaky" (as Melody would put it) people who marry and preg young but raise their children themselves. Harmony contacts Melody and unexpectedly shows up in Otherside, where she hangs around with Melody and her friend Zen.

So, not a bad premise for a young adult novel, though aspects of it are contrived enough that I should have guessed I wouldn't fall in love with the book the way everyone else has. McCafferty hasn't formed her story around a cast of deluded teenagers as much as she's thought of caricatures to place into her narrative. Melody, Harmony, Zen, Melody's friends and their pregnancies, Melody's parents, Harmony's huge extended family - none of them feel real to me, but rather as if they've been put in this narrative to stand as examples of or for something.

McCafferty comes up with a lot of future words and slang for this novel, which I started writing down halfway through - "paps" for papparazzi, "foto" for photo, "Avatarcade" (future version of the arcade, with avatars!), "GlycoGoGo Bars" (energy bar), "US Buff-A" (restaurant), "Mi-Net" (crazy future internet, accessed with contact lenses and earbuds), "pro boner work" (instead of "pro bono work" - well, this one was kind of funny I guess), "procreationists" (Christians who believe in spreading the seed), "starcisstic" (instead of narcissistic), "breedy bits" (you know), "facespace" (speaking to a person in person), "MasSEX parties" (orgies). These words seem to stand in the place of world building (McCafferty doesn't build a world as much as she suggests, via future words, that she has built a world), and McCafferty's characters seem just as superficial as her world and its language.

Over at the blog I Swim for Oceans there's a pretty interesting interview with McCafferty in which she talks about some of these things, like why her characters speak the way they do and how that changes over the course of the novel. All my notes about this book are kind of disappointed scribbles (e-bookishly speaking) about how she goes for the most obvious ways to distinguish her characters. Harmony's grown up in a Godfreaky community, so her internal monologue is filled with references to God and the Bible, while Melody's is more along the lines of wondering whether she is "fertilicious" and what she will look like with a baby bump. McCafferty lays this on thick early in the book, and it fades away as time passes. Like she says in the interview, McCafferty used that sort of internal monologue to show character development - as the narrative progresses the girls are finding their own voices and freeing themselves from the voices their families and cultures have given them - but this reads, like so many other aspects of the novel, as superficial and contrived, because this use of the language is the only way McCafferty chooses to show character development, and also because Bumped takes place over such a short time period that this shift in internal monologue isn't believable.

Bumped deals in issues that are pretty heavy - questions about who owns the rights to their own bodies, how teenagers' bodies are taken advantage of when it becomes the only way of surviving as a race, monetizing sex and pregnancy - but the tone of the novel doesn't fit these issues. At novel's end the characters are rethinking their world and their places in it and how they treat their bodies, but the decisions they reach about these issues largely take place behind the scenes. As readers, we see little deeper than the slang they use to express themselves. The disconnect between the subject matter and the voice is huge and distracting, and lets down this story and the potential it had. McCafferty drowns what could have been an interesting and thought-provoking story beneath her top-heavy world - developed in terms of language and fashion but feeling barren in every other way. Read more ›