When Lightning Strikes by Meg Cabot

Publisher- Simon Pulse
Publication Date- March 1, 2001
Pages- 266 pages

Jess Mastriani has never been what you'd call a typical Midwestern teenager—her extracurricular activities, instead of cheerleading or 4-H, include fist-fights with the football team and month-long stints in detention. A part of Jess would like to be the prom queen her mother has always envisioned her being, but another part is secretly counting the days until she's saved up enough money to buy her own Harley.

Then something happens that guarantees Jess will be one of the in-crowd...at least until her newfound talent ends up getting her dead.


I got this book not knowing anything about it, except that is was written by Meg Cabot and I liked her other books fairly well
     The plot was pretty enjoyable. It was, for the most part, realistic, as were the problems some of the characters faced. The plot was predictable, but I still wanted to keep reading.
     The characters. Ah, the characters. This was where the problems lied. To be blunt, I didn't like them. Jess came off as this tough , more guy than girl, kind of person. Even though I am against women being stereotyped and such, it was a bit ridiculous. She kept talking about how tough and bad-ass she was and how she had anger problems, but I really didn't see it. She punched one guy and hung out with the bad boy and had a disturbing obsession with motorcycles, and all of these were unrealistic and overblown. Her friend Ruth had an IQ of 167 (which is near impossible, especially since she got that score when she was a child) but she didn't really act that smart. Not saying she was dumb, but she wasn't anything special. And that's about all we know about her. And her dad's a lawyer. And then there was Rob, who was the only character I liked, because he was the only realistic one, and there is a bit of a mystery behind him. SO in summary, the characters were either unrealistic, underdeveloped, or both. 
     Fortunately, the plot and humor made up for it enough to give it a pretty good rating.


My Rating: 4/5 I will probably be reading the sequel, Code Name Cassandra, later this year.


I will be reading The Maze Runner next. See my next post to see the books I will be reading next month.