Airhead.

Author: Meg Cabot
Price: Rs. 250
Publisher: Macmillan Children's Books

Another one of my favorites!! It's hard for me not to like a book, if it's by Meg Cabot and this one totally rules! It's the first in the Airhead Trilogy. The story of seventeen year old Emerson Watts, a very normal teen, tomboyish (so like me, 'not-so-girly', I mean), with a cool IQ level and a fetish for computer games (particularly Journeyquest) and surgery shows on Discovery channel, this story is what you would say is about "turning life the other way round"!

Storyline

Em is forced to attend the grand opening of a new Stark Megastore (by a company called Stark Enterprises) because her Mom doesn't want Em's fourteen year old sister, Frida, to go there alone. Frida's a fashion maniac and wanted to attend the opening because of the star presence of singing sensation Gabriel Luna and teen supermodel Nikki Howard. While the three of them (Em's best friend, Christopher is there too) are waiting for Gabriel's autograph, some protesters create a ruckus, in the midst of which a TV panel from overhead drops on Em and Nikki's injured.

It's a month later that Em wakes up in a hospital. She discovers (after she's been 'kidnapped' from the hospital by Lulu Collins(Nikki's best friend) and Brandon Stark (Nikki's on and off boyfriend)) that she's been the recipient of a rare kind of Brain Transplant! Nikki's brain had allegedly 'died' and the only way to save Em's life was the transplant! So Em's brain in Nikki Howard's body! She's petrified! It's supposed to be a secret, because the transplant process is still not legal, but carried out anyway by a secret division of Stark Enterprises! Here's the catch- there's a bond. Nobody should know Nikki is not really Nikki, but Em. AND Em (in Nikki's body) would be fulfilling Nikki's duties as a model and the face of Stark. That meant that Em was legally, technically dead, just not literally. 

Em is heartbroken. She has to live Nikki's life. Covered with the excuse of amnesia, Nikki comes back to the world of fashion after a month (only now it's Em, of course). Em discovers a whole new side to her life. People in Nikki's life like her even more now, since she's not so mean anymore. However the person she missed the most was Christopher (whom she's always liked) and that's what made her get into TAHS, Em's school, she wanted to see him so bad. And of course to complete her education. Christopher's a changed person and that kills her inside. No matter how hard Em tries to befriend him, it's useless (why would he want to be friends with the face of the company that killed his best friend?).

It's a roller coaster ride, with all cheerleaders crooning over her and trying to impress her, Robert Stark(owner of Stark Enterprises) not paying her any attention, finding out that Nikki's stark brand laptops were bugged with spyware (that the computer pro Em easily recognized), and modelling! What she is not aware of is, how much she's in danger unless she decides to just keep playing Nikki and not poking her nose in weird circumstances!

What's special

A scientific base on the story told with such imagination and humor, it's a book that keeps you hooked. I liked the way it portrayed the fun and the worrisome side of modelling. The moral was that you don't realize what you have till you've lost it, be it your home, family, or best friends; filled with the wonderful Meg Cabot style, humor and realistic portrayal of the protagonist. It's quite interesting actually, urging the readers to keep on guessing what dangerous motive could be behind such a clean story? The answer's in the second book to the series, Being Nikki! Em's experience actually living Nikki's life! A must read for teens!!! :)

Other books in the series- Being Nikki, Runaway