"Opal Mehta" centers on an academically oriented Indian-American girl who, after being told by a Harvard College admissions officer that she is not well-rounded, doggedly works to become a typical American teen: ultrasocial, shopping- and boy-driven, and carelessly hip. With "Publishers Weekly" calling the book ""Legally Blonde" in reverse," Viswanathan stated that her own college prep experience had inspired the novel: "I was surrounded by the stereotype of high-pressure Asian and Indian families trying to get their children into Ivy League schools." When asked about her influences in an interview given to "The Star-Ledger" of Newark, New Jersey (before any allegations of plagiarism had surfaced), Viswanathan responded that "nothing I read gave me the inspiration" to write the novel.