Monday, January 23, 2012

Book Review: Bumped


TITLE: Bumped
Book 1 in the Bumped Trilogy
AUTHOR: Megan McCafferty
PUBLISHED: 2011
CATEGORY: Young adult
GENRE: dystopian, romance
PREMISE: In the future two sisters reunite after being seperated.
MY REVIEW: This is a difficult book for me to review because frankly I didn't like it. However a part of me recognizes that this is one of those books that people will either despise or love as seen by the mixed reviews on Goodreads. To be fair to the author, it has a clear plot, there are some hilarious lines, writing is passable, and the idea was interesting. Technically wise, it's not a horrible book.
Too bad I hated all the characters. Sorry, there was not one likeable one in the bunch. The religious sister was self-righteous and selfish, the non-religious sister was just selfish, both the male leads were sexist and I was irritated by the constant slang the author made up that was childish. It doesn't help that once again we come up with a great dystopian concept and then ignore it in favor of dull melodrama. Seriously YA authors, WHY DO YOU DO THIS? Now yes, I have heard the claims that this is supposed to be satire. Well, sorry but even when one looks at it as satire it doesn't work because the book doesn't say anything. Satire is supposed to have something to say about whatever it is that it's satirizing (is that a word?). I didn't get any message from this book. If there was one, it was lost in translation big time.
But again, this is something that will either appeal to you or it won't appeal to you. That's why I say check it out from the library first to see if it's to your taste. As for me, I'm not bothering with the rest of what is apparently a trilogy.
WHO SHOULD READ: romance fans, fans of McCafferty's other books, dystopian fans
MY RATING: Three out of Five eggs

2 comments:

  1. I really agree here, I wanted to like it. It just fell really flat for me. Personally thought I tend to have problems with books that have alot of religious talk in them. I also read Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan and had issues with it, thought I did like it better than Bumped. oh well.. to each their own

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  2. Yeah, religious talk can either ruin a book like this or make a book (I found some commentary on it in Da Vinci Code really interesting for example). Unfortunately this is a case of it not helping a book.

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