Student Review: Airhead (Cabot)

Title: Airhead

Author: Meg Cabot
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 337
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars


The science fiction book Airhead, by Meg Cabot, describes the drama and turmoil 16 year old video game loving tomboy Em Watts is thrown into when she wakes up not as herself, but as world famous supermodel Nikki Howard. At the grand opening of the Stark Megastore, where Em, her best friend Christopher, and Frida, her little sister, are, a giant flat screen TV dangling from the ceiling comes loose and falls on Em. She wakes up a month later and discovers that she is in Nikki Howard’s body. Apparently, when the TV fell on Em, her body was completely crushed, but her brain was fine. At that exact moment, though, Nikki Howard, who was a huge representative of Stark, had a brain aneurysm, which caused her to become brain-dead. Because she was such a huge representative of Stark, the company, who also had a medical lab and hospital, took Em’s brain and put it inside Nikki Howard’s body. Now Em must learn to act and behave like Nikki did, hanging out with Nikki’s friends and boyfriend, going to her modeling shoots, living in her loft. She is not allowed to tell anyone who she really is, or else her parents will be sued for two million dollars. But she discovers that not everything is as it seems to be.


I chose this book because it sounded very different from what I usually enjoy reading, and I love fashion and modeling. Some characters that I thought were very interesting were Frida, who is her little sister. Frida is almost the exact opposite of Em. She is very social and loves fashion, and she has lots of friends. Through this experience Frida and Em become closer, and Frida learns that she shouldn’t always take things for granted. I think the theme of this book is don’t judge a book by it’s cover, because in this book Em discovers that everyone thinks that Nikki is a total airhead just because she models for a living, so she has to really prove to everyone that she isn’t just some ditzy, gorgeous girl who poses in outfits for a living.


I loved this book because the characters were very interesting and there are a lot of plot twists and the author makes something sounding very fake seem very real. I recommend this book to teenage girls because there is a little romance and it is told from a girl’s point of view.


This book really made me think, what would I do if I woke up as someone else and was stuck like that forever?
--Helena, 8th grade

Great review!  I love this book and, of course, anything written by the author.  I must confess that I have not read the sequels (Being Nikki and Runaway), though I keep meaning to.  So many books, so little time...