Bumped: My Review

Bumped

About the Book:

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.

My Comments:

This is a story about my grandchildren.  Doing the math, I figured that the girls were born around the time I hope my grandchildren will be.  It is a story of adults using teens--and one thing I noticed a complete lack of in the book was love, particularly self-sacrificing love.  Teens have been sold on the idea of "pregging"--having babies for profit--even though they have take hormones to get them interested in "bumping" with the sperm donors (don't know why they don't just use a syringe), more hormones to keep them from becoming attached to the "pregg" and are knocked out for the delivery.  

Few people look good in this book.  Harmony has been raised in an Amish-ish community.  By that I mean they are agricultural, family oriented and wear clothes that are not in current fashion.  Harmony mentions that her mother remembers the horse and buggy days.  However, they are not Amish as she also mentions sacraments.  The Church is a controlling entity and it forced her into an arranged marriage, as was the norm in that culture.  Harmony points out that more women in their twenties and thirties in her community are fertile than in the mainstream world--which makes me wonder if this virus is sexually transmitted.  In the mainstream world, condoms are now outlawed and teenaged sex is encouraged.  Melody's parents are college professors, have no faith and are traveling around the world, monitoring her via their version of the internet.  Money she has; love, I'm not so sure.

One thing I despised about the book was the ending.  Basically, there was no resolution of anything.  Its like I want to turn the page and read the next chapter, but I can't.  I've read that there is to be another book, and so I guess that's where I'll find out what happens next.  I really think this is a cheap trick on the part of the author.  I have no problem with series books or authors re-using characters, but I feel cheated when books don't have a final ending--remember that plot diagram we all learned in school, the one where "resolution" was at the bottom of the peak?  

Grade:  C+ (would have been a B+ if there had been a decent ending)