The Jump
Written by: Brittney Morris
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
2023
The Jump takes four teens throughout Seattle as they try to win a high-stakes scavenger hunt and save their community.
Okay, now The Jump definitely has potential, but a lot about the novel felt forced and unrealistic.
Lacking Grounding
The novel’s biggest issue was that it felt like every character was supposed to be “special” but really just felt shoehorned into the story.
I appreciate the author’s desire for a wildly diverse cast of characters. However, it feels very surface-level.
Take Spider, for example, our Asian trans character, the group hacker. As readers, we know a little more about Spider, but it feels very surface-level. The book is too short to maintain the quick, high-stakes pace, which takes away from getting to the core of the characters.
And this goes for all the characters, Yas, our queer Middle Eastern parkour star, and Han, our Caucasian character who suffers from mental illness. Again, we don’t get to deal with who they are, and it’s harmful to the plot because we can’t connect to the characters. As for Han, even by the end, I still had no idea what mental illness he was dealing with. It was touched upon once in one chapter when they discussed his mom leaving, and that’s it.
Most of the characters get this treatment of turmoil mentioned only once and then the door shut on it to focus on the plot.
Because of that, they felt two-dimensional. Representation is great, but if you’re going to do it, do it right by giving the characters depth and delving into their identity to make it matter.
Another struggle I had with the novel was that it felt very unrealistic. I read all types of books to escape reality, but something has to ground me in the world the author is creating.
These teenagers are part of a scavenger hunt. Still, the scavenger hunt takes a quick turn when The Order, an online vigilante group, takes over the online forum.
This is where things started to get weird and outlandish. I’m all for high stakes, but there also has to be some level of believability for me, or at least the characters have to rise to the challenge in a way that makes sense.
The stakes skyrocket, and the characters, normal teenagers, are soon found leaping from tall buildings exploding beneath them in downtown Seattle!
It was wholly outlandish and came out of left field, considering how the story began as realistic before quickly turning into this action film.
Final Thoughts
I think The Jump could have been reworked to have been longer, giving more time to develop the character and building the plot better so that the ending made more sense.
A Little Forced & Wild | The Jump Review
The Jump takes four teens throughout Seattle as they try to win a high-stakes scavenger hunt and save their community.
Cynthia Ayala
Cynthia Ayala-Bujnicki majored in Writing and Publishing from Emerson College. Editor-in-chief of Cyn's Workshop, she loves to read and write while tending to her pepper plants. She currently lives in South Florida with her husband, two kids Dante and Selene and two furbabies Mr. J the Kitten who Thinks He's Batman (yes, that is his full name) and Nyx.
