Okay, so Meg Cabot is the Queen of YA literature. I have this image of her in my head sat on a throne of books, all of her own of course, because she has written plenty!! A gaggle of YA authors are sat around her; some feeding her little chocolate cupcakes with raspberry icing, some wafting her with giant bamboo leaves. Others are just sat around soaking in the glory of her presence, listening to the author who has the best accent regale them with stories the Queen herself has written. She also has fabulous shiny big hair and a perfect manicure, JUST like Nikki!! I know, I know, I have a overactive imagination, what of it?!
So, here's the deal. Em is a fantastically amazing nerd. Her idea of a fahhhhabulous night in is sitting around either watching documentries with her best friend Christopher, who she is so totes in love with but DAMMIT, why doesn't he realise! or seeing what level she can get to on Journeyquest, which is like, only the best video game EVER! Frida, her little sister, is turning to the dark side, what with her trying out to be a cheerleader and ACTUALLY knowing what shade of lipgloss suits her. Throw in the opening of a large gonna close down all the shops in your area megastore owned by the shady Stark Enterprises, which her parents make her take Frida to, because it just really isnt enough that she's turning into a clone all by herself. Add a pop star with a British accent, a supermodel called Nikki Howard and a giant plasma TV that only falls off the wall ONTO EM when activists protesting against Stark Enterprises take over the show.....and.......BAM!@!!! Em is no longer Emerson Watts, well, she is....BUT she's only stuck in Nikki Howards body. WHAT THE WHAT RIGHT?! Then crazy hot highjinks ensue, because she has to actually pretend to be Nikki, because Stark Enterprises are blackmailing her mom and dad with the millions of pounds hospital fees and such.
Basically, any book that can combine feminisim, make up, hot boys and being supermodely gorgeous is a book that I am all over like white on rice. Plus it has, wait for it, a BRAIN TRANSPLANT. I know! close your mouth and stop drooling. I really understood Em's confusion and anger when she woke up in Nikki Howard's body, because even though it would be prettttttty cool to wake up and be super duper gorgeous, I would kind of be annoyed that I had to pretend to actually BE Nikki, because that would be like loosing your own identity and would pretty much blow. Plus, the fact that Em has to still honour all of Nikki's modelling contracts because Stark paid for the brain transplant, well, I don't even like having to do my own work let alone someone else's so I get why Em was like HELL NO. But when she come around, I liked that she still had her values and integrity and didn't morph into a mean girl.
Also, if you like sexytimes then oh boy, OH FREAKING BOY DOES SHE BRING IT. I promise, if teenage me was reading this book I probably would have tried to kiss everything that is male and that moved. The swoonizzle between Em and Chistopher was sweet and endearing and just FINE thank you very much. And the hotness between Em in Nikki's body and well, any guy who decided they wanted some was pretty damn off the hotness scale, because even though Em hasn't really kissed anyone before, Nikki's body is like a one woman kissing machine. Like POW.
In conclusion, this book made me want to be a supermodel. HA just kidding. Well only a little. Like with the other Cabot books i've read, this has a verrrrrra special place on my bookshelf. Because Em, I mean Nikki, is a true literary BFF. She can console me when I can't find the perfect shade of lip gloss. She can cry with me when the guy I'm crushing on doesn't even realise because he is stoooopid as most guys are. And most of all, she can make me laugh with her sarcastic comments and general nerd like behavoiur. In one word, Love.