Bumped
Megan McCafferty


rating: 5 out of 10 "books"

I loved Megan McCafferty’s Jessica Darling series so when I heard she was finally coming out with a new book I was thrilled. The only problem is that when you love a series so much, it’s always a little hard to get into anything completely different by an author. Bumped is exactly that. While the writing style and voice of the characters in Bumped is the same as that of the series I know and love, the storyline couldn’t be any more different. Harmony and Melody are twin sisters, separated at birth and completely unaware of each other until their sixteenth birthdays. Adopted by different parents, both girls grow up in completely different environments; Melody in a society where becoming a RePro (professional birther) is a smart move, and Harmony in a church settlement where girls are matched with their future husbands by the church council before they may even think about having intimate relations. In a world where a virus has caused men and women over the age of 18 to become infertile, it is up to teenage boys and girls to produce offspring for aspiring parents. While babies have long been sold off by amateurs (teen couples actually IN a relationship), the newest trend is to go pro and sign a contract with an infertile couple through an agent. This couple in turn has the right to find a partner for the teenage boy or girl to reproduce with, oftentimes to try to find matches that represent the infertile man or woman in appearance. This way, the offspring could actually pass as their own. When Harmony ditches the farm to unite with her long lost sister, Melody is hardly ecstatic. Things go even more south when a case of mistaken identity lands Melody’s gorgeous contracted RePro match in the company of Harmony. But as the story looms close to an end, what each sister may have thought they always wanted may not be so. While not exactly a twist ending, things do not turn out the way Bumped has you thinking it will at the start. Each character goes through some major revelations and as different as Melody and Harmony may seem (to the reader as well as each other), by the end of the book they do not seem so different (again to the reader as well as each other). The events in the story end up bringing the sisters closer than they ever could have imagined.

I have to admit that I have mixed feelings about this book. While I do love the writing (and the premise of the story is kind of cool), I feel like there are some holes in the plot. If people are unable to have children after a certain age, why don’t they just have them younger when they are still able to? It’s not like it hasn’t been done before. Back in early times sixteen/seventeen wasn’t too early for girls to have children. Even thirteen wasn’t too early. People were married as early as that age. So what’s to stop this futuristic society from simply reverting back to some of those early day practices? At least that way, the mother’s children would be her biological children. And I know that McCafferty was trying to be futuristic with her use of slang in the book, but I found it somewhat annoying. Half the time I didn’t understand what the slang was meant to imply, especially when it was then used in a different context. As much as I love Megan McCafferty, overall I was a bit disappointed with Bumped. Apparently there is supposed to be a sequel to this book. Maybe the next one will be a bit better.

Tell Me a Secret
Holly Cupala



rating: 9 out of 10 "books"

“It’s tough, living in the shadow of a dead girl. No one mentions my sister. If they do, it’s mentioning her by omission, relief that I am nothing like her. I am the good sister. Thank God.” – Tell Me a Secret pg. 1

It’s been five years since Miranda Mathison’s bad girl sister, Xanda, died, but the mystery surrounding her death and the secret Xanda took to her grave still haunts Miranda. Now seventeen, the age Xanda was when she died, Miranda, or Rand, is dealing with some issues of her own. Her perfect life: an awesome boyfriend, perfect best friend, and promising future at art school after graduation, are all shaken up when two little pink lines on a pregnancy test threaten to destroy everything Rand has worked so hard for. To top it all off, the shaky relationship she’s had with her mother all her life, especially after the death of her “failure” of a sister, feels like it’s been permanently derailed after the news of her pregnancy leaks.

But the truth is, Rand has always wanted to be like Xanda. Maybe that’s why she surrounds herself with bad girl Delaney, and had isolated herself from her once best friend, Essence. So while all these bad things keep happening to her, Rand can’t help but obsess over the vagueness of Xanda’s death, and the secret truth that her parents might be keeping from her surrounding the way her sister died. The only problem is that it seems everyone has turned against Rand, her best friend and boyfriend included. With no one to talk to, not even her parents, Rand is completely on her own in terms of her pregnancy.

Talk about capturing the essence of high school! True, I’ve been out of high school for quite awhile now, but it felt like I was sucked right back into the drama of it all whilst reading this book. I for one, know how hard high school can be; how mean, manipulative, clique-y, and backstabbing (even your good friends!) can be. Cupala was able to capture all of the emotional angst and hardships that many teens face while pursuing secondary education, even more so, when you’re a soon-to-be teenage mother. I would never wish what happened to Rand in this story on anyone. And if you thought your mother was bad, wait until you get a load of Rand’s mom. In a somewhat related note, I also thought Holly Cupala did a really awesome job of representing (no offense my teenage friends!), the kind of ignorance young people have at that age, whereas, instead of going and finding out the facts for sure yourself, making a judgment call and abandoning your friend(s), boyfriend, or girlfriend based on what someone else told you. There was so many times when I wanted to yell at certain characters in the book because things were so obvious to me as an adult reader, and so easy to fix, but understandably confusing to a teen.

The only downside, that I was able to think of when it came to this story, was Xanda’s “secret.” Either the author was really unclear about what it actually was, or I just assumed one part of the story was the secret, but I was a little let down by Rand’s discovery as it related to Xanda. However, when all is said and done, I thought this was a really great book. It wasn’t just one of those “oh hey, another teenage pregnancy” kind of stories. I’ve read a lot of YA books in my time, and this was one of the few that really did YA right: no crazy/complicated love triangles, too mature for their age characters, or Gossip Girl-esque storylines. Holly Cupala definitely knows her stuff and I’m positive that if I had read this book in high school, I would have related to it even more than I just did a handful of years later. Go out and read this book!