Consistent with Cabot’s themes of accepting yourself and putting yourself out there. The ‘be yourself and the flawless hot guy will want you’ is her go to trope and honestly I’m not mad about it. Its not ALL about the guy but this is a YA romance; so it’s a good message of like you can be poor or overweight or odd or unpopular or cursed but someone will still care about you. This one was definitely darker than her usual books, stalking and almost-murder, dead animals as threats. Not her usual vibe. Again, not mad about it.

Rereading this as an adult was wild. This actually felt a little out of the norm for Meg Cabot in some ways. This may feel boring for this day and age but it TRULY was needed as a teenage girl in the world during the 2000's cause we were taking psychic damage daily is all I gotta say.

What WAS consistent for Cabot's books: social commentary on financial issues, gentrification issues, and feminism. She always hits the nail on the head in a subtle 'baby's first social commentary book' but this one was a lot more forward. This idea that feminism wasn't just a girl's right to be more of a tomboy or less of a beauty standard chaser, but it's also a girl's right to be as feminine as she wants to be was so novel for this era of women-hating-women and calling it feminism in the early 2000's. Once again, I swear we were out there taking psychic damage daily. this book really brings forward the question of what is TRULY feminism.

what was inconsistent with Cabot's books (in the best absolute way) was the almost scifi theme of implanting your brain into someone else's body. that was crazy. and the conspiracy stuff with the big corporation that has Nikki's contract. so well done. The moral questions behind brain implants here and what science could potentially be doing one day, its all more sophisticated than the slice of life teenage stuff that meg cabot generally writes. It really held up and the only other of her books I've read that she has explored scifi or fantasy themes so blatantly was avalon high and that was a higher rated book for me than princess diaries, how to be popular, etc. were.

I'm doing a book tour/reread of some of the books I liked a lot in middle/high school. I definitely read a lot of this kind of book - tropey, relatable characters designed to help build confidence in young girls who sincerely needed it. Slice of life teenager stuff. It's a little boring if you're not into the genre (or have outgrown it) and definitely designed for middle graders, but it has a lot of the same themes as princess diaries did. Meg Cabot definitely found her lane and stuck with it: liberal upper middle class white girls. I am disappointed in the lack of diversity but do like these as an intro to social commentary - if you have money things are easier and maybe that's not right, lots of commentary on immigrants in her books, and the books are definitely geared towards that millennial-age-type teenager breaking out of their conservative hometown's views. (How to be popular, avalon high, airhead, etc.) I imagine this type of character is easy for her to write for a reason.