Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Review: Runaway by Meg Cabot

Airhead, Book 3

Tags: middle grade, YA, sci-fi, conspiracy

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Note: potential spoilers for Books One and Two

Summary

Emerson Watts is in a heap of trouble. Her brain’s been transplanted inside Stark supermodel Nikki Howard’s body, the love of her life might be mad at her, and she’s being imprisoned by Brandon Stark, son of her employer, who wants Nikki’s secret in order to trump his father. When they find out Nikki’s secret, however, they are initially puzzled…until they slow begin to piece things together, and realize that they’re holding a horrifying—and dangerous—secret in their hands. But with Stark Enterprises extremely willing to kill to maintain their secret, how will Em and her friends ever set things right? Will they be able to get their happily ever after?

Review

At long last comes the final book in the AIRHEAD trilogy, and it closes this series with a satisfactory bang. Everything you love about Meg Cabot is here—the voice, the boys, the romance, the misunderstandings—and the ending is clever without being seeming overly plotted, shocking yet unforced.

As is typical of Meg Cabot’s books, everything is wrapped up nicely without overexcessive drama and writing. Em’s down-to-earth attitude paired with Cabot’s usual “teen girl” voice—y’know, the tangents? the silly yet sweet assumptions and misunderstandings?—provides for a great narrator. As this is the last of a trilogy, I have to say that the ending was good, if not, perhaps, worth getting through two books of mostly drivel to get to this point. It’s shocking, it’s smart, and it’s totally plausible within the realm of Em’s world.

The biggest problem that remains with me after reading this trilogy is that this could’ve easily been a one-book storyline, and RUNAWAY does give the impression that Cabot intentionally stretched it into a trilogy for financial reasons. Still, fans of the AIRHEAD series will love the way the plot develops throughout the course of these three books. If you’ve made it through BEING NIKKI, then you should definitely read RUNAWAY: it’ll satisfy all your questions and leave you content. Pretty good for an ending to a series that I had mixed feelings for.

Similar Authors
Jen Calonita
C. Leigh Purtill

Writing: 4/5
Characters: 4/5
Plot: 3/5

Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5


Cover discussion: 3 out of 5 - I like that the, uh, covers to this series match pretty well...? Don't know what else I have to say here.

Point / April 20, 2010 / Hardcover / 320pp. / $16.99

ARC received from publisher for review.

5 comments:

  1. I can't wait to read this book! I picked up the first two last week. After quickly finishing them I was glad to see I didn't have that long of a wait for the third book!

    Thanks for the review!

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  2. I've read a few other reviews of this book, and they've been relatively positive. I'm not sure if I'd truly enjoy this type of book, but I'd like to read it anyways. Thanks for a great review!

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  3. Excellent well-balanced review, Steph... but now I'm really torn! I absolutely enjoyed Airhead as a beach read last year, but I'm not sure whether to continue the series - and this one doesn't sound great enough to get through Being Nikki first. That's a lot of pages just to get to a fab ending two books later. Still undecided I think.

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  4. I was afraid to read your review. I don't want even the smallest spoiler for this book.
    I'll just say I'm happy that she ends it with a bang!

    ReplyDelete
  5. OHMYGOD!!!!!!!
    I love Meg Cabot's books!so much drama!oh yeah, i read all three books,and,man! They were AWESOME!!!!!!

    ReplyDelete

Hello! I'm so excited to read what you have to say. Due to high amounts of spam, I'm forced to disabled anonymous comments for the time being. Sorry for any inconvenience this causes, and I hope you can understand and still appreciate the content here!

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