Review: Bumped by Megan McCafferty

Title: Bumped
Author: Megan McCafferty
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Published: 26th April 2011
Series: Bumped #1
Source: eARC with thanks from Netgalley and publisher

When a virus makes everyone over the age of eighteen infertile, would-be parents are forced to pay teen girls to conceive and give birth to their children, making teens the most prized members of society.
Sixteen-year-old identical twins Melody and Harmony were separated at birth and had never met until the day Harmony shows up on Melody’s doorstep. Until 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 religious Goodside, preparing to be a wife and mother. She believes her calling is to bring Melody back to Goodside and convince her 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.

As soon as you start to read this book you are thrown into Melody and Harmony's world. This is a world where teens live to and are paid to "preg". You are thrown directly in to the new speech patterns and technology with no explanation as to what anything is. I found this a little off putting as it felt like being left out of an in-joke that your friends keep telling over and over again. Also I was very thrown off as one of the slang words used has quite a different meaning in the UK and every time I read it I did a double take and it threw me off.

I thought the premise of the story was really interesting. All diseases have been cured but the result is that women have the inability to become pregnant after their late teens. This results in couples paying teens to be surrogates. This story is told from the point of view of identical twins who had been separated at birth. One twin was raised to be the perfect surrogate and the other was raised in a religious commune where marriage must come before a child. Harmony leaves her religious confines to find her twin and tell her of the word of god so that she may come home.

The book alters chapter about between Harmony and Melody. Personally I preferred the Harmony chapters as I related to her the most. Like her we had not grown in this world and the surroundings were unfamiliar. I think this made it easier to relate to her. This book was interesting and I am a huge fan of Megan McCafferty (Jessica Darling is amazing) but this book did not captivate my attention in the way I hoped it would.