Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #222874 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780545040525
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From School Library Journal
Grade 7–9—Cabot delivers yet another fun and frothy piece of escapism in this far-fetched but rousing roller-coaster ride of a novel. The plot centers on a freak accident at the new Stark Megastore. Emma Watts has a huge plasma TV land on her just as Nikki Howard, supermodel and the Face of Stark, enters the store and suffers a brain aneurism. Stark, determined to keep their moneymaking "face" alive, embarks on a risky venture that they have been doing for years, unbeknownst to anyone else. Now Emma's brain is in Nikki's body and her life will never be the same. If Emma tells anyone, her family will be slapped with millions in medical bills. Cabot pulls readers in and makes them care about Emma, her family, her best friend, and her secret crush. No one in the cast is completely fleshed out but there is some character development. This book is sure to fly off the shelves and leave readers breathlessly awaiting the promised sequel.—Shari Fesko, Southfield Public Library, MI
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Em is considerably more interested in playing computer games with her friend Christopher than in befriending the A-list girls who rule her high school. A freak accident mortally injures Em and leaves superstar model Nikki brain dead. After a transplant operation, Em wakes up in Nikki’s body and learns that she must keep her identity a secret and live her life as Nikki. Readers who are willing to swallow the brain transplant idea will find that the rest of the story goes down easily enough; there’s plenty to entertain readers with stars in their eyes as well as those who disdain the pop-culture glamour of Nikki’s life. Besides the juxtaposition of Em’s world with Nikki’s, there are elements of humor and glimmers of compassion for the rich and famous in this first-person story. Toward the novel’s end, “Nikki” enrolls in Em’s old school. Can the girl inside that too-perfect body reconnect with the boy she secretly loves? Stay tuned. Grades 7-10. --Carolyn Phelan

Review
Cabot (the Princess Diaries series) dishes up all the story ingredients her fans have come to know and love romance, humor, believable teen dialogue and even a fantastical twist. This last bit requires a major suspension of disbelief, but willing readers will love it. Emerson Watts, 16, likes living in New York City's SoHo neighborhood, but she can't tolerate most of the students at her private high school. She and her best friend (and secret crush), Christopher, escape their outcast status by immersing themselves in online video games. But Emerson's bland world shatters when she attends the opening of a new Stark Megastore and suffers a terrible accident. She wakes up in the hospital one month later in someone else's body and not just anyone else's, but that of superhot teen model Nikki Howard. Cabot's portrayal of Emerson is brilliant. She's a too-cool-for-school independent chick, but she doesn't grow annoying, because the author makes it clear her sarcasm stems from not fitting in. Once she's Nikki Howard, however, she has to rethink her positions on the social order. Pure fun, this first series installment will leave readers clamoring for the next. Ages 12 up. (June) --Publishers Weekly:

Unlike her starry-eyed sister, down-to-earth Em Watts isn t thrilled to be at Stark Megastore s star-studded opening, especially since her best friend and secret crush, Christopher, can t stop drooling over teen modeling sensation and Stark representative, Nikki Howard. Just as Em wonders how Nikki can captivate people so, she suffers an accident that sends her to a Manhattan hospital with life-altering injuries that intimately intertwine both women forever her brain has been surgically transplanted into Nikki s body. This bizarre new relationship with Nikki forces Em, a self-identifying feminist, to reevaluate her life views and slowly to accept Nikki as more than just an airhead. Although quick to set up the accident and its repercussions, the text slows down to an even pace, introducing many juicy issues to be explored in the upcoming sequel, especially with respect to nefarious corporate activities. Although it relies on a somewhat far-fetched premise, the text s abundant references to current pop culture and Em s witty character keep this read both grounded and fun. (Fiction. YA) --Kirkus

Customer Reviews

Meg Cabot does sci-fi?
Really, I should have seen it coming. Meg Cabot is obsessed with Star Wars, watches way too much TV and has already done the psychic thing, the princess thing, the paranormal thing and the historical fiction thing. And with the popularity of Stephenie Meyer's The Host: A Novel, why shouldn't she jump on the body-snatcher bandwagon?

Emerson Watts loves to play video games, has never kissed a boy and refers to the popular crowed at her alternative college prep school in Manhattan as the Walking Dead. So when she wakes up as a $4,000-dress-wearing, boyfriend-stealing, high-school-drop-outing supermodel, she doesn't know how she can take over Nikki Howard's identity let alone walk in her stiletto shoes.

While this book was interesting, and Nikki's best friend Lulu is definitely a stand-out character with her philosophies on love, skin care and house-keeping, I just didn't really buy it. I mean, come on, a music mega-story paying for a body transplant so they don't have to find a new spokes-model? It's a stretch, even for the author who brought us a princess in hiding, a kick-boxing ghost shrink, Arthur reincarnated, a lighting-struck person-finder and an unlucky teenage witch. Not that it was really a bad book, just not up to par.

Plus, can we please get a completed series sometime soon? With Princess Diaries, Volume X: Forever Princess (Princess Diaries) and Queen of Babble Gets Hitched (Queen of Babble) looming in the distance, two more books promised for the Heather Wells Mystery series, the unfinished Jinx series, the unfinished Avalon High series, her new middle-grade Allie Finkle series and who knows what other series rolling around in her head, do we really need a sci-fi version of America's Next Top Model?

But if you want a light read that is classic Meg Cabot, you can't pass up this book. Her books are always filled with characters that are quirky and relatable, romance and teenaged angst that keep YA lit lovers coming back for more, and dialogue that will inevitably win you over.

Courtesy of Teens Read Too
I can't lie; this had to be the oddest book that I have read by one of my favorite authors!

Emerson Watts is a pretty typical nerdy girl at a good school. She has one best friend, who she is secretly in love with (It is a guy, by the way.) But she is only typical until she goes to a store opening with her sister and gets injured in a very freak accident.

When she wakes up after about a month of being unconscious, she feels like she is someone else.

And she actually is.

This is not a paranormal book. She gets a brain transplant.

At the end of the book I literally said, "Get me the next book! NOW!" The ending is a total cliffhanger!

The characters are smart, witty, and a little weird, as with typical Meg Cabot books. A fun read, even though the beginning is a little hard to understand, and can be difficult to get into. However, it is definitely worth reading the whole thing, because it is truly hilarious!

Reviewed by: Taylor Rector

Okay, but not up to par
I enjoy reading just about all of her books. They are funny, light, and well-written.

This, one, however, just went no where. It was boring, and it just didn't have the spark or fun of previous works. The ending was extremely unsatisfying, and absolutely nothing happened. Seriously.

Here is just about everything that happened: Em Watts getts into an accident, has her brain transplanted into a model. This confuses her for a while. Then she goes to live as a model with the models best friend. She is in love with her best friend who thinks she is dead now that she is in a new body.

That is all that happens. Their wasn't resolution to anything, Em wasn't a particularly funny, wise, interesting or anything character.

Also, It seemed like the book wanted to have a 'point', or try to say something, about looks, and society's judgement of people, being different, and how you have to be pretty to fit in, but at the end it just seemed like, "Yeah, being pretty is AWESOME! I'm way cooler now that I am pretty! Everyone wants to be my friend and I can have any guy I want. And now I like wearing pretty clothes, because I am pretty!" Uh, yeah, I buy that.

It was a quick read, but not satisfying in any dimension. I'll get the next one out of the library.