Runaway (Airhead #3)

by Meg Cabot

 

 

Emerson Watts is on the run: from school, from work, from her family, from her friends, from herself.

With everyone she loves furious with her for something she can't explain, and nothing but the live Stark Angel fashion show on New Year's Eve to look forward to, Em's reached the end of her rope... what's the point of even going on?

But when she discovers the truth about Nikki's secret, she knows there's only one person she can turn to.

Will Christopher be able to put aside his personal feelings and help her expose her employer to the world? Is it even fair to get Christopher involved—since if he agrees, there's every chance that Stark Enterprises will try to have them both killed—this time, permanently?

Maybe it would be better for Em to just keep on running.

REVIEW:

 Runaway is the third and the final installment in the Airhead series by Meg Cabot and it shines bright like a diamond (bra!).
Last books in a series are scary because there is so much that needs to wrapped up and the readers need a sense of closure and satisfaction and Runaway does 85- 90% well in that department. Scores do get settled.
I liked Being Nikki the most and this book comes after that. Like a typical (good) Cabot book, this book has humor, romance, action, confessions and sarcasm :').

Em was hands down my favorite character in this book. A no brainer, that one! I guess I understood her independent streak unlike Christopher who just could not stop sulking about that. Both of them are right in their own place though. They did have issues but the fact that they tried to work on it was commendable. Nikki finally used her head this time (!) and Steven and Lulu were just too cute. I really like Gabriel too. I mean that guy helped all these people with loads of issues without even knowing them. And what did he get in return? 

But the most surprising thing in this series was its social commentary, hidden between the lines. This book warns all these profit making companies to keep the interest of its stakeholders in mind otherwise you WILL go down. HARD. This is a glamorous series with a moral and might just turn out to be a guilty pleasure for you. 

RATING (for the entire series, combined):  3.5/ 5 stars

Being Nikki (Airhead #2)

by Meg Cabot

Things aren't pretty for Emerson Watts.

Em was sure there couldn't be anything worse than being a brainiac in the body of a teenaged supermodel.

But it turned out she was wrong. Because that supermodel could turn out to have a mother who's gone mysteriously missing, a brother who's shown up on her doorstep demanding answers, a former best friend who's intent on destroying Stark Enterprises to avenge the death of his lost love, and a British heartthrob who's written a song about her that's topping the charts.

How can Em balance all that with school, runway shows, and weekend jaunts to St. Johns — especially when she's got ex-boyfriends crawling out of the woodwork who want more than just a photo op; a sister who is headed to the high school cheer leading championships; a company she represents that seems to be turning to the dark side...

Not to mention trying to convince the love of her life that models aren't really airheads after all...especially one model in particular.

But then, nobody said it was going to be easy being Nikki.

REVIEW:

I think that blurb was enough to tell you what all is there in the book :p

This book was so much more enjoyable than the first one with loads of suspense and discoveries and a horrible cliffhanger. Meg Cabot has done an amazing job of delivering a mix and match of a story along with humor. I am saying story because some of her other books completely lacked it. 

Em's fun. I feel that she as done a good job of 'Being both Nikki and Em' and she is so funny.I enjoy reading the pov of sarcastic protagonists who have a stand and Em definitely falls into that category. I also liked the way her relationship with people from Nikki's past progressed, especially Lulu. Lulu has got to be the most adorable character in the series. Nikki's brother Steven, another new entry in the series, is amazing too. The stereotype that there is just something about men in uniform must be true. Other characters too, like Gabriel, Frida, Felix have a personality of their own which makes them attractive, novel and quirky. 

Now i'll come to Christopher. That scene when Em finds her old photo in his room was so emotional and the conviction with which he waned to avenge Em's death was so romantic. Too bad Em had to die for revelation of his other side. His character has really grown and changed. He either is good at guessing or was born very smart. Yeah Chris, take Stark down! They deserve it...
RATING:     3.5/ 5 stars

Day of the Predator (TimeRiders #2)

by Alex Scarrow

  

Liam O’Connor should have died at sea in 1912.
Maddy Carter should have died on a plane in 2010.
Sal Vikram should have died in a fire in 2026.

But all three have been given a second chance—to work for an agency that no-one knows exists. Its purpose—to prevent time travel from destroying history . . .

When Maddy mistakenly opens a time window where and when she shouldn’t have, Liam is marooned sixty-five million years ago in the hunting ground of a deadly—and until now—undiscovered species of predator.

Can Liam make contact with Maddy and Sal before he’s torn to pieces by dinosaurs—and without endangering history so much that the world is overtaken by a terrifying new reality?

REVIEW: 

I was sooooo excited to read this book because I really liked the first one. It was a very different kind of reading experience for me. And this book did not disappoint at all. In fact it makes me crave the third book. After reading the LAST line, i was like:        


Not kidding!
Gimme the third book now! This series is awesome!

In the first book we saw Liam, Maddy and Sal get recruited as time riders whose job was to preserve the world and its timeline. In this book, with Foster gone ( :"( ), Maddy has become the strategic leader and the team's next assignment is to prevent the assassination of the discoverer of the concept of time travel. Another time traveler group wants to kill him but that would mean changing history's course yet again. So, Liam and the support unit (Its a girl this time aaaand she like Liam aaand the feeling is mutual I feel) go to the year 2015 to prevent that but there, accidentally, Maddy opens another time window and these two along with some other students get transported to the Golden Age of Dinosaurs! Read the book to find out how they come back to the present or do they even???

My favorite character in the book is Liam. He is just too cute and yes, I pity him but his strength and smartness need to be praised. Maddy is showing growth. She has got a lot of responsibility and you do see her bending under its weight but she will manage. For some reason, I feel there will be a love triangle between Maddy, Liam and the support unit Beck in the sequels. Sal was more like a side~y character this time and I want that to change. Becks is such an adorable lifesaver and she went through so much. I was scared for her towards the end.

The plot was action packed in both 2001 and millions of years ago. The time zones have been described brilliantly and accurately. The only thing that I had a love- hate relation was the lack of actual dinosaurs. The villains ie. our ancestors (?) were such ruthless, horrifying, blood crazy creatures who killed without mercy. I should have been a duck instead of a human.

This book is about survival, intelligence, team work, gruesome deaths, mystery, friendship, hidden truths, adventure, explorations, different present scenarios and fossils. Read this series! 
RATING: 4/ 5 stars

Airhead (Airead #1)

by Meg Cabot

EM WATTS IS GONE.

Emerson Watts didn’t even want to go to the new SoHo Stark Megastore grand opening. But someone needed to look out for her sister, Frida, whose crush, British heartthrob Gabriel Luna, would be singing and signing autographs there—along with the newly appointed Face of Stark, teen supermodel sensation Nikki Howard.

How was Em to know that disaster would strike, changing her—and life as she’d known it—forever? One bizarre accident later, and Em Watts, always the tomboy, never the party princess, is no longer herself. Literally.

REVIEW:

Meg Cabot books are absolutely perfect for lazy days. Re- reading one at the age of nineteen is like going through an old photo album. I remember the thirteen- fourteen year old me always liked her standalone novels more and then came this trilogy. Most of the Cabot books are a good mix of fun, feminism, awesome guys, teenage problems, family problems and happy endings. This one is no exception. In fact, additionally, it has glamor, make up, runways, a brigade of hotties, a pinch of mystery and brain transplants!!
Yeah.
Cool right? 
Em is a tom- boy cum geek which obviously doesn't put her on the list of 'Most Desirable People in School'. But she doesn't care and that's why I like her. She would rather give all the Walking Dead (the 'in' people) a piece of her mind (looooooooool)  and play Journeyquest, the best video game on Earth with her best friend Christopher. But her life changes when, because of an unfortunate accident, her brain gets transplanted into the body of the hottest model in the country Nikki Howard and she is made to honor ALL her modelling contracts including being the Face of a Company that she detests.
So it is goodbye "nail biting and baggy hoodies and fatty food" and hello! "runway, media,a hot singing sensation,a hot heir to to a corporation worth billions, an adorable room mate and duh a poodle".






I like the fact that in spite of being a very funny novel, it had its serious moments, especially the hurt Em felt when she started realizing that her old self and her old life is really dead and she has no option but to adjust to her new life with new people and Nikki's old past about which she had no idea.
The sarcasm :')
There were parts in the book where I kept humming the song Best of Both Worlds by Hannah Montana, not the chorus (lol) but the line "It's really you but no one ever discovers (Christopher !!!)".
 This is Em's book throughout and since I have already read the entire series, I can assure you that the sequels take turns that you just don't expect. Consider this book to be a prologue as things do stretch in parts but it's a cute series.
RATING:     3/ 5 Stars

KILLING ASHISH KARVE

-Salil Desai

As the name suggests, this book is a murder mystery. Not being an ardent reader of crime thrillers, I was quite excited to read my first murder mystery novel. And I wasn't disappointed. 

What I had not expected was that the novel would straight-away start with a mysterious murder and will progress solving the same through the pages. Who was killed, isn't a suspense at all; the title gives away that part. The interesting part is how, layer by layer, the corpse gets a shape and character in the pages that follow. 

I am a serious Sherlock fan, and sure, suspense excites everyone, but when you are reading something like this which only talks about the murder every now and then, the mystery gets to your nerves. You sure don't want read such a spine-chilling disturbing tale at night when you are alone in your room with no one to disturb. I did exactly what I am hereby advising you all to beware of. The experience was frightening and I almost dropped the idea of getting to the end that very night and started off from where I had left the next bright morning.
It was like I was solving the case myself. The narration was simple and the clues were laid at exactly the right place giving the reader a fair chance to unmask the culprit. The culprit was not difficult to guess but the motive was quite a surprise.

All in all it was a nice murder mystery to start from, simple yet involving. 

I would recommend you all to read this one if you haven't tried the genre yet!

p.s. It's a different experience altogether when you are reading a signed copy...the first one for our blog <3 <3...

RATING

Shatter Me (Shatter Me #1)

by Tahereh Mafi

I have a curse
I have a gift

I am a monster
I'm more than human

My touch is lethal
My touch is power

I am their weapon
I will fight back

Juliette hasn’t touched anyone in exactly 264 days.

The last time she did, it was an accident, but The Reestablishment locked her up for murder. No one knows why Juliette’s touch is fatal. As long as she doesn’t hurt anyone else, no one really cares. The world is too busy crumbling to pieces to pay attention to a 17-year-old girl. Diseases are destroying the population, food is hard to find, birds don’t fly anymore, and the clouds are the wrong color.

The Reestablishment said their way was the only way to fix things, so they threw Juliette in a cell. Now so many people are dead that the survivors are whispering war – and The Reestablishment has changed its mind. Maybe Juliette is more than a tortured soul stuffed into a poisonous body. Maybe she’s exactly what they need right now.

Juliette has to make a choice: Be a weapon. Or be a warrior.

REVIEW: 

I borrowed this book from my best friend. I am stupid. I made a mistake.

 That is exactly the way the thoughts of the girl has been written.Different? Yes. Works? No.

This is the story of a human cum venus fly trap Juliette who has been imprisoned as her touch is lethal and how her life changes when she gets a cell mate Adam (the only good character in the book!) with whom she shares a history. It was insta- love for them which was completely UNBELIEVABLE. Insta- crush/like/admire: yes but saying "I love you" to each other in the first 100 pages itself, seriously? Now, the Reestablishment wants to use Juliette as a weapon against their enemies so they take her to some facility and the story takes on from there.

In the beginning, I felt the story had potential. I kinda liked the Adam and Juliette scenes in their cell. They should have stayed there. But after that, the story lost track to be unique. The plot was very convenient, something you must have read before if you are a young adult fan like me. It was only in the last few pages that you are like "Where did that those people come from?" I really don't like authors who write okay-ish books but then give a cliffhanger at the end. 

The writing reminded me of Terribly Tiny Tales. It was poetic, metaphorical and at times beautiful too but it seemed inconsistent with what the characters spoke/ thought of later on.

"He leans back against the couch. Runs a free hand over his face. Seasons change. Stars explode. Someone is walking on the moon."

 Am I the only one who thought of Neil Armstrong here? Lame, i know, but true story!

“It's been me and you against the world forever," he says. "It's always been that way.”

What world????  I refuse to believe this is a dystopian novel. It was more like a love story with a weird villain and a heroine with a power on and off button.
RATING:     2/5 stars