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Bumped: Megan McCafferty

Wednesday, May 4, 2011
To be honest, I wouldn't read this book if I had known what it was about, I would have skimmed.  The only part about the book that kept me reading were the two main characters, Melody and Harmony. 
The whole book was a bunch of cliches, some created by the author, some as obvious as the names Melody and Harmony.  Basically, this is a dystopian novel where only the teens can have babies.  This makes teens a hot commodity and a way to get revenue.  Parents take advantage of their children's reproductivity, children are having kids before age 11, jingles and bands are centered around fertility, etc...
Melody and Harmony are identical twin sisters.  Harmony grew up in a very churchy environment while Melody grew up as "queen bee" of her clique.  Harmony enters Melody's life right before Melody is scheduled to bump with Jondoe, a hot sperm donor.  It turns out that Harmony left her church community for more reasons than just to see Melody, she falls in love with Jondoe and impersonates Melody.  Melody is wooed by her best friend, Zen, throughout the novel.  The only problem is Zen's verticality, he is too short to be a viable sperm donor and Melody is worth too much money to just let her womb be open to anything.  The novel continues with many revelations, surprises, etc...
I enjoyed and grew to love Melody and Harmony, they were the only parts of the book that kept me from putting the book down.  I grew tired of the constant "fertilicious" components of the novel, I got the idea already!  The concept, while interesting, is almost a little too much on the gross side for me (the author has an 11 year old giving birth).  Then there's the fact that I saw no scientific evidence of how this "virus" could possibly render the majority of the possibility infertile (I am a scientist by nature and want answers darn it!). 
To conclude, I would skim this book if I were the new reader.  While there are good parts, the other parts a little on the controversial and downright annoying side. 

1 comments:

  1. I just can't.... There is no way I could read this book and keep my sanity. Nope, nada, no way no how. I am 32 and struggling with fertility issues and I think that this book would do more than make me roll my eyes; I think it would piss me off!