Nina Oberon's life is pretty normal: she hangs out with her best friend, Sandy, and their crew, goes to school, plays with her little sister, Dee. But Nina is 15. And like all girls she'll receive a Governing Council-ordered tattoo on her 16th birthday. XVI. Those three letters will be branded on her wrist, announcing to all the world-even the most predatory of men-that she is ready for sex. Considered easy prey by some, portrayed by the Media as sluts who ask for attacks, becoming a "sex-teen" is Nina's worst fear. That is, until right before her birthday, when Nina's mom is brutally attacked. With her dying breaths, she reveals to Nina a shocking truth about her past-one that destroys everything Nina thought she knew. Now, alone but for her sister, Nina must try to discover who she really is, all the while staying one step ahead of her mother's killer.
Review: 16 is the magic number is this book. In this dystopia book, 16 is the new legal age and sex / sexual appeal is a main theme, along with, well breaking out of the dystopian society's norms and demands. The storyline lagged a bit, but the dystopian society concept was interesting.
Thank you NetGalley, HaperCollins, and Balzer + Bray for the electronic ARC.
Synopsis (courtesy of Goodreads):
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.
Review:
I was excited to read this book, since the synopsis looked good and all the hype over it. I was sadly disappointed with Bumped when I did get to read an advanced galley.
While this dystopia is an interesting concept, I felt it fell short of bringing the "so what?" to the storyline. It seems that within the last/current/to-come months, there have been many fertility-crazed dystopian YA's that have come out (XVI, Wither - to name a few). Sadly, I felt Bumped did not bring very much to the table, in terms of having engaging characters (I will say that Zen and Melody were decent characters), a decent plot and being well written.
Within the first few pages of the book, I knew I was not a fan of the writing style - especially with all the made-up-for-the-book slang. I did not think that using "bumped" instead of referring to sex, pregnancy, and all the other normal terms, was an engaging or cutting edge/ futuristic way of talking about sex, pregnancy and breeding teens based on their genes. I actually found it rather annoying by about page 50 or so.
I found the writing style to be choppy; specifically, when the author is switching back and forth and back and forth from Melody's perspective to Harmony's perspective. There were numerous times I had to go back to the beginning of a chapter to figure out who was narrating such and such part. And the narrative seemed to be quite rushed, so much that after I was done reading it, I was thinking to myself, there really wasn't very much happening in the book at all
There were also many lingering, pretty big questions that the author never addressed; ie, explaining the virus that causes humans to lose fertility by the age of 18, why the age of 18 specifically, how Goodside was developed/ the history or at least some background on its origins and separation from the rest of the world that became and is bumped obsessed, what happened to in-vitro fertilization and sperm/egg banks?
So, while the premise the author introduces in Bumped is quite interesting and has potential, it missed its mark in creating an enjoyable satirical dystopian story.
Thank you Netgalley and Harlequin Teen for the ARC!
Netgalley blurb:
ME?
A LEADER?
Okay, I did prove that there’s more to Inside than we knew. That a whole world exists beyond this cube we live in. And finding that led to a major rebellion—between worker scrubs like me and the snobby uppers who rule our world. Make that ruled. Because of me, we’re free. I thought that meant I was off the hook, and could go off on my own again—while still touching base with Riley, of course. He’s the one upper I think I can trust. But then we learned that there’s outside and then there is Outside.
And something from Outside wants In.
My Synopsis:
With the Force of Sheep’s success at overthrowing the Trava family dictatorship over the Uppers and Scrubs of the Inside, Trella begins to realize that there are many hurdles and feats that still need to be accomplished in order to have a happy, organized and functioning population of Inside individuals. In place of the Trava dictatorship, a council of 19 members, consisting of 9 Uppers that were major players in the first and now this revolt, 9 Scrub representatives, one for each labor of trade, and then Jacy. Trella refused to be part of the committee but has accepted the role as a consultant for the council.
Trella is aggravated with her time “being wasted” in council meetings, since they don’t take into account her advice, and the council meetings also ebb away the time she wants to be spending doing two of her favorite things: being with Riley and exploring the area of the Inside she discovered that has room and supplies to create 5 more levels.
Shortly after the success of the rebellion, the setting up of the council and commencing the construction of levels 5 and more, strange things begin to occur – attacks on Logan and Trella, disappearing computer files, bombs, and oh the Controllers are taking back control of all the systems. Trella is required once again to step-up and help determine who the perpetrators are, figure out who she can and cannot trust, and guide Insiders, Uppers and Scrubs alike, to defeat the newest threat that has arrived to the Inside, from the Outside.
Review:
**Warning: some spoilers**
Love, love, loved it! MVS has done it again with Outside In and Trella’s story. From the very beginning, I was hooked – hook, line and sinker. I literally inhaled this book in one day. I enjoying discovering more about Riley, Logan and his sister, and Lamont. I also liked the introduction to some of the new characters – I’ll just say some of them you grow to like, only to hate, but accept them again, and then there are some interesting characters that you just want to cut off their oxygen and put a punishment collar on them and perhaps castrate them (but some kind of already are, in a way, haha). The flow of the story from start to finish was good. There were literally no chapters or parts of the book where I felt I could pause at to take breaks – each chapter ending seduces you / intrigues you / puts you on the edge of your seat, so that it’s difficult to part from the book without finishing it.
I really enjoyed reading more about Trella’s character and her behavior – especially how she has to mature, step-up to responsibilities and learn to think / look at the “big picture”. Trella also must face and deal with the reality of her relationship to Dr. Lamont, her birth mother and attempt to be on better terms with Dr. Lamont.
While the introduction of the Outsiders, their arrival, covert tactics and their physical description was a bit hooky in the sense that “OMG teh aliens are coming! And they don’t come in peace!”, I think MVS created a background story for the Outsiders that sounds plausible and is also quite interesting to read about. And to be honest, they make a great plot for the book as Trella and co.’s enemies and threat to the Inside and all who inhabit it. Congrats and thank you again Ms. Snyder for another wonderful novel and I hope there is a third Trella book possibly being considered or in the works.
Thank you Netgalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the ARC!
In 2060, the world 17-year-old Maddie (Madeline) lives in is lived through computers and networks. No one has to leave their homes to go to school or work, to “chat” and hang out with contacts/friends, see a movie, get coffee – everything has become a virtual reality existence. This is a result not really due to technological advancements pressing for this to happen, but rather because of the escalating school violence – shootings and bombings at schools of all levels – and an attempt to keep children in a safe, peaceful environment. And for Maddie, being permanently grounded and is always being monitored by her father, her world is very controlled and restricted – a world that has become to her a prison sentence and is suffocating her.
Her rigid and regimented life, however, becomes interesting upon meeting Justin on an online tutoring site, who then entices her to actually physically meet up with him at the tutoring center in town. Though apprehensive at first, Maddie agrees to meet Justin. After their face-to-face meeting and other meetings, Maddie begins to question the digitalized world, what is so dangerous about actually physically meeting and hanging out with people, to express her true feelings and opinions, instead of hiding them away and being secretive and anonymous, and discovering her unknowing role in the resistance against digitalized life.
I really enjoyed this novel, which is Katie Kacvinsky’s debut book, and I think it was extremely well written (I couldn’t put it down and finished it in less than a day). It reminded me of a mixture of Matched/ Hunger Games series/ the Uglies series, which turns out to be a great and fascinating combination. I also loved learning about the dynamics and ins-and-outs of the resistance groups. This dystopian novel – which I suspect will become a series – takes a more “what if computers ruled the world/ dictated humans’ lives” storyline. Not in the sense like Terminator computers taking over, but that our/humans’ entire lives are spent on and through computers and everyone else that is “plugged in.” This digitalization of the world occurred when Maddie was 6 – but what bothers me is how the adults, who accomplished in digitalizing the world and everyone (and almost everything) in it, suppose the human race is supposed to continue / procreate if people are not meeting each other physically. Sure, you would be able to do online dating, but you can’t really do online marriages, or have/make kids via online. I would be interested to find out, perhaps in the second novel if there is a series to this story, how the adults who run the digitalization of life in 2060 think they will be able to continue the human populace, if people aren’t willing to leave their houses for anything.
