Book Review: Unpregnant

Unpregnant, by Jenni Hendriks and Ted Caplan, tells the story of seventeen-year-old Veronica, who just found out she was pregnant via a test in her high school bathroom. Like, just found out. She’s still pinching the pee stick in her fingers when Bailey, her ex-best friend busts into the bathroom. Shenanigans ensue that include a flying pregnancy test, a secret kept between two girls who quit keeping each other’s secrets years ago, and the story’s off.

What attracted me to Unpregnant was the broken friendship trope. (Is it a trope? I feel like it should be, if it isn’t already. This is not to say tropes are bad. We each have our favorite. And when one is done right, its done RIGHT.) Unpregnant navigates the pitfalls and consequences of ex-best friends partnering to solve a problem, each mixing in their own motivators, to get the girls on the road by the 50 page mark. By the time they climb in Bailey’s Mom’s boyfriend’s car and set off to the clinic in Albuquerque, literally everything they leave in the dust is moot. As a reader, all I cared about was in their car.

What kept me reading Unpregnant, once I was fully invested in the broken friendship, was the reality of the story, seeped in situations ranging from amusing to downright bizarre. (Example: there’s a run-in with a stripper who’s also a religious zealot. And now that I think about it, hailing from the Midwest like I do, those two things aren’t on opposite ends of the spectrum as much as I thought.) While Veronica and Bailey are on a frantic road trip to reach a clinic that can perform Veronica’s abortion, every weird thing they counter is weird, yes, but none of it distracts from the whole:

Veronica is pregnant.

Veronica doesn’t want to be pregnant.

What can Veronica do to stop being pregnant?

What I wish had been addressed explicitly within the story was Veronica’s ex- boyfriend Kevin’s actions: he poked a hole in the prophylactic without unequivocal clearance to do so from his partner. I gasped in a blind rage as I read those pages. The direct discussion of sexual assault does not come up, though I wish it did. Veronica and Bailey get revenge, yes, but the consequences should have been far more severe.  

While in Albuquerque, attempting to “procure a hasty abortion”, as Juno has said many, many times on my television, Veronica and Bailey separate as Bailey (a fully rounded character in her own right) had her own motivations for driving 14 hours overnight to New Mexico. Their reunion, without spoilers, is everything a reader could hope for. Just know: a friendship is restored.

I was skeptical about Unpregnant pre-cracking of the spine. I was aware of HBO’s movie (of which I still have not viewed), but crazy gal pal road trips tend to veer into "Thelma and Louise" territory in a hurry and I didn’t much have desire to watch two teenagers fly off the side of a cliff. And I doubted that Kevin looked much like Brad Pitt.

I need girls who are powerful and strong and sassy AF…who don’t dive into nothingness. (I haven’t watched "Thelma and Louise" since, oh, second grade. Maybe my adult eyes would see something different. I just googled the plot, and  yes...I'd probably see an entirely different story. Also, let’s not talk about how I watched "Thelma and Louise" in second grade.)

But I must tell you, without diving too far off the proverbial cliff into a mini-therapy session: Unpregnant hit the sweet spot for me. Yeah, the girls do dumb shit. You don’t find yourself attempting to tip a cow without wondering what in the hell you did to take you to that moment. (This South Dakota born and bred girl knows, from experience, that tipping cows is a worthless endeavor.)

But Veronica and Bailey also do two huge things right: they take care of each other when it matters, and they support each other’s decisions.

And in Young Adult literature? That’s insanely, crucially key for representation.

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PS – I read on @jenniandted’s Instagram that Unpregnant was originally set in Rapid City, SD. I’m not sure which direction Jenni and Ted had the girls traveling to find a clinic, but if it was Sioux Falls, I would have met them down street, taken them cookies, and offered to let them sleep in my basement until they were ready to venture out again.

Yours in pro-choice sentiments,
Stephanie