Meg Cabot

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Meg Cabot is a Chick Lit author extraordinaire. Probably most well known for her Princess Diaries series, which was adapted for a Disney movie. Has written a number of series for teens and adults and recently began her first series for children.

Works written by Meg Cabot include:
  • The Princess Diaries series: Her breakout success. The novels focus on teenager Mia Thermopolis who seeks solace in her diaries upon finding out that she is actually the Princess of Genovia. Adapted into movies starring Anne Hathaway and Julie Andrews.
  • The Mediator series: Focuses on Suze Simon, a young woman who is a mediator ie she can interract with ghosts. She takes it upon herself to help them cross to the other side. Meanwhile trouble arises when she falls in love with a ghost.
  • 1-800-Where-R-U: Normal teen Jessica Mastriani's life is turned upside down when she is struck by lightning. She can now look at pictures, go to sleep and when she wakes up she knows exactly where the person in the picture is. Now Jess is attempting to use her power for good while avoiding working for the US government. Became the Lifetime series Missing. Being re-issued as Vanished.
  • All American Girl: Samantha Madison finds herself a national heroine when she saves the President from an assassination attempt. And then she finds herself falling in love with his son. Has a sequel entitled Ready or Not.
  • Avalon High: Ellie Harrison begins to notice strange parallels between King Arthur and life at her new high school. Has a manga sequel and a Disney Channel movie.
  • Teen Idol: Jenny Greenley, known for being her school's The Messiah, guides movie star Luke Striker around her school as he studies for a role. Meanwhile she learns about herself.
  • Queen Of Babble series: The main obstacle in Lizzie Nichol's love life is that she just cannot for the life of her keep a secret!
  • Airhead Series: Brainiac Em Watts loses her body in an accident and has her brain transplanted into supermodel Nikki Howard's body. Now she has to deal with fame, the shallow lifestyle she hates and a conspiracy behind the imposing Stark Enterprises.
  • Insatiable: A modern re-telling/sequel to Bram Stroker's Dracula.
  • Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls series: A series of children books for tween girls.
  • The Heather Wells Mysteries: A series of three books about Heather Wells, a former child Idol Singer, whose label dropped her. She now works at a university as a dorm administrator. In every book, someone ends up dead, and Heather investigates while dealing with her crazy co-workers, annoying, cheating ex-boyfriend (also a famous pop star) a police officer who believes she's nothing but trouble, and her huge crush on her roommate/landlord/brother of her former flame.
  • Abandon Series: In a modern retelling of the myth of Persephone, teenager Pierce Oliviera dies and is chosen to become the consort to the Lord of the Underworld, John Hayden. Pierce manages to escape back to the realm of the living but something keeps drawing her back to John. Not helping is the presence of the Furies, evil souls who wants nothing more than to make John suffer and hurt her in the process.
Works by Meg Cabot with their own trope pages include
Meg Cabot provides examples of the following tropes:
  • A Date with Rosie Palms: Ready or Not
  • Adaptation Decay - Hilariously Lampshaded in the 1-800-WHERE-R-YOU books. Jess comments on the TV show and talks about how it has virtually no basis in truth and many characters in the last book mention that they've watched the TV show.
  • All Girls Want Bad Boys - Jess in the 1-800-WHERE-R-U series. Even though beneath his tough exterior, the 'bad boy' Rob isn't that bad.
    • Pierce and John in Abandon.
  • Alpha Bitch - Frequent in her novels, but among the most obvious are Lana Weinberger (Princess Diaries series) and Lauren Moffat (How to be Popular)
  • Author Tract - Cabot isn't afraid of inserting her political and social views into her books. It's more obvious in certain novels than others.
  • Character Overlap: One of the Princess Diaries novels has Mia reference Sam from All-American Girl and Jess from 1-800-Where-R-U
  • Consummate Liar: Katie in Pants on Fire.
  • Cool Big Sis: Lucy in the All-American Girl books. It just takes awhile for Sam to realize this.
  • Darker and Edgier: The Abandon Series seems to be this compared to her other work, especially Avalon High (as both are modern day retellings of old myths).
  • Designated Hero: Katie in Pants on Fire.
  • Friend to All Living Things: Pierce in Abandon.
  • The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry - In All-American Girl and its sequel Ready Or Not, the protagonist Sam has a bit of an inferiority complex due to her older sister being a Lovable Alpha Bitch and her younger sister being a Teen Genius.
  • Gratuitous Spanish - Jesse, to some extent, in the Mediator series.
    • A good chunk of the Isla Huesos citizens in Abandon.
  • Hide Your Lesbians - Averted in the Queen of Babble series.
  • I See Dead People - Did everyone forget the Mediator series is pretty much this?
  • Latin Lover-Jesse, from The Mediator. Full Stop.
  • Lovable Alpha Bitch: Occasionally, most of them border on Spoiled Sweet (see below)
  • Love You and Everybody: In Teen Idol, Scott claims that this is why he could never tell if Jenny liked him.
  • The Messiah: Jenny in Teen Idol
  • Middle Child Syndrome: Sam in All-American Girl
  • 90% of Your Brain - The basis used to explain how Jess gets her ability after being struck by lightning in the 1-800-WHERE-R-U series.
  • Pair the Spares: Very frequently
  • Real Women Never Wear Dresses: In-universe in Airhead. So, the main charcter is anti-materialistic? OK. But she and her mother degrade feminity so much they insist her little sister not try to be a cheerleader because, as we all know, cheerleading degrading to women. She hates on model Nikki Howard, without knowing anything about her, because Nikki advertizes a cosmetics brand. All the other girls in Em's class are shallow, slutty, and an Alpha Bitch.She decribes popular girls as "The Walking Dead". The only girly girl in the seris in a nice light is Lulu, and even she is supposed to be dumb, but goodhearted
    • To be fair, Em gradually starts to change her mind on this as the books progress. And near the end of the series she calls her mother out on the fact that she is such a Straw Feminist that she does not even tell her daughters that they look pretty. Her mother seems to learn from this.
  • Scrapbook Story: Her Boy books for adults, which are written entirely in e-mails, letters, and journal entries.
  • Sexy Priest - Father Dominic in the Mediator series is frequently commented on by Suze to be attractive, even in his 60s.
  • Shaped Like Itself - The standalone book How to be Popular, which is sometimes mistaken by people as an actual guide on how to be popular. (The title actually refers to the self help book the protagonist follows in her efforts to gain popularity.)
  • Shipper on Deck - Jess from 1-800-WHERE-R-U series ships Special Agents Johnson/Smith.
  • Shout-Out - when Meg realized that a lot of anime fans were a fan of her books, she put random Neon Genesis Evangelion namedrops into her books.
  • Spoiled Sweet - A few. The most notable are Sam's sister Lucy from All-American Girl, Jennifer from Avalon High, and Lulu from Airhead.
  • Spoiler Title / Trailers Always Spoil: The first Airhead book spends a great deal of time leading up to the reveal that Em has had her brain transplanted into Nikki's body. Anyone who read the back cover already knows this.
  • Teen Genius - Rebecca from All American Girl and David from the Mediator Series.
  • Teen Idol - Luke Striker from, well, Teen Idol.
  • Their First Time - An issue in many of her books, especially Ready or Not.
  • Unfinished Business - The reason Suze is needed in the Mediator series-her job is to help these ghosts finish their unfinished business so they can go onto their afterlife.
  • Unlucky Childhood Friend - Skip from 1-800-WHERE-R-U series
  • Victorious Childhood Friend - Very frequent. A notable example is in the Queen of Babble series where the first book is all about the protagonist's romantic relationship with attractive, sophisticated, wealthy Luke Brandon. By the end of the third book she has dumped him in favor of her best friend's ex and longtime friend, Chad. As the series progresses it makes sense, but you wouldn't have guessed that was how the series would turn out from the first book.
  • Wrong Guy First - Queen of Babble series
    • Twice in the All-American Girl series (with the same guy no less!). Sam initially believes she loves Jack before meeting David and Lucy believes she loves Jack before meeting Harold.
  • Your Cheating Heart: Katie in Pants on Fire, Nikki in Airhead
  • Wife Husbandry: Heavily implied in Abandon, Pierce is made sure to meet John at a young age to make sure they meet again when she's older.