How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life is a young adult novel by Kaavya Viswanathan, written just after she graduated from high school. Its 2006 debut was highly publicized while she was enrolled at Harvard University, but the book was withdrawn after it was discovered that portions had been plagiarized from several sources, including the works of Salman Rushdie and Meg Cabot.^[1][2] Viswanathan immediately apologized and stated that similarities were "completely unintentional and unconscious."^[3] All shelf copies of Opal Mehta were ultimately recalled and destroyed by the publisher, and Viswanathan's contract for a second book was canceled.^[4]

While attending Bergen County Academies, Viswanathan showed her writing – including a several-hundred-page novel on Irish history she had already completed – to Katherine Cohen of IvyWise, a private college admissions consultancy which Viswanathan's parents had hired to help with their daughter's application process.^[3][5] Through Cohen, Viswanathan was signed by the William Morris Agency under senior agent and William Morris partner Jennifer Rudolph Walsh^[3][5] and referred to book packaging company 17th Street Productions (now called Alloy Entertainment),^[3][6][7] a media firm responsible for packaging the Gossip Girl and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants book series, among others.^[8] On the basis of an outline and four chapters of the novel that would become Opal Mehta, Viswanathan eventually signed a two-book deal with Little, Brown and Company^[5] for an advance originally reported to be $500,000.^[1][3] She began writing the book the summer before college, and finished it during her freshman year at Harvard College, while taking a full course load.^[5] Opal Mehta was published on April 4, 2006,^[9] and Viswanathan was profiled by The New York Times on April 6, 2006.^[5]

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.^[5] 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."^[5] 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.^[10][11][12]

Michael Pietsch later told The New York Times that Viswanathan's advance for her two-book deal was less than the previously publicized amount of $500,000, and that it was split between the author and Alloy Entertainment.^[13] Alloy President Leslie Morgenstein asserted that while the firm helped Viswanathan "conceptualize and plot the book,"^[13] it did not help with the actual writing.^[14] Though Alloy was no longer involved once the book was sold to Little, Brown,^[6][7] the company shares the copyright with Viswanathan.^[3][14] Her agent Walsh told The New York Times that the plot and writing of Opal Mehta had been "1,000 percent" Viswanathan's.^[6][7] The novel was edited by Asya Muchnick at Little, Brown,^[6][7] and the movie rights to the book were sold to DreamWorks SKG in February 2006.^[11]

Opal Mehta garnered mixed reviews,^{[15][16][17][18][19][20][21]} many of which described Viswanathan as an author of "chick lit."^[22][23][24]

In her initial statement on April 24, 2006, Viswanathan had stated that she and the publisher would be revising the novel for future printings "to eliminate any inappropriate similarities."^[4][27] The same day, Michael Pietsch of Little, Brown stated, "Kaavya Viswanathan is a decent, serious, and incredibly hard-working writer and student, and I am confident that we will learn that any similarities in phrasings were unintentional."^[11] He subsequently noted that an acknowledgment to McCafferty would be added to future printings,^[3] an intention echoed by Viswanathan in her April 26, 2006 interview with Katie Couric on The Today Show.^[32] Little, Brown recalled all copies of Opal Mehta on April 27, 2006.^[4][7] The next day, first edition copies of the novel were priced at $80 on eBay.^[10] On May 2, 2006, after further allegations of plagiarism had come to light, Little, Brown released a statement from Pietsch saying, "Little, Brown and Company will not be publishing a revised edition of How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life by Kaavya Viswanathan, nor will we publish the second book under contract."^[4] DreamWorks had already halted development of the film adaptation in late April 2006.^[2][37] Harvard University said soon after controversy broke that it would not affect her academic standing there.^[12] She graduated with honors in 2008,^[38] and subsequently went to Georgetown Law School, from which she graduated in 2011, the same year her parents were killed in a small plane crash in Ohio.^[39]

On May 18, 2006, McCafferty noted, "I had heard so much about her book and I had planned on reading it [before the allegations surfaced] ... It was sad and it was a shock that it could happen on such a big scale ... This was a big book that was getting so much attention and publicity. It is the most surreal thing that's ever happened to me."^[26] Alerted to the situation two weeks before The Harvard Crimson picked up the story, she stated that "The media broke it and I was sick to my stomach ... People don't know how hard it was to have somebody else take that from me and try and profit. As someone [who has been] writing my entire life, to build my career, it almost made me lose faith in the publishing industry."^[26] Though Alloy Entertainment had previously stated that it helped Viswanathan conceptualize the book but did not help with the actual writing,^[13][14] McCafferty also raised the issue of their possible culpability in the scandal.^[26] As book packagers sometimes use their own staff or hire freelance writers to ghostwrite manuscripts for publishers, McCafferty asked, "Was it the book packagers who really wrote the book and plagiarized my books or was it her?"^[26]

Of Viswanathan being remembered for the scandal, McCafferty also said, "I wouldn't want to be defined by a mistake made in such a public way ... I hope she can move on from this. I hope that for both of us."^[26] In addition, she noted that "Books for teens have taken a huge beating in the media" in the aftermath of the incident.^[26] "These very elitist comments about 'how all books for teens are crap; so isn't this just crap stealing from crap'. My books are not crap."^[26] McCafferty noted that she was insulted by an opinion letter published in The New York Times in which one writer wrote that teen books are "undemanding literature for undemanding readers."^[26] "There's so much good writing for teenagers now," she said. "People make across the board judgments."^[26]

The reception and fallout from the publication of the novel was discussed by Shaleena Koruth in the 2014 book Postliberalization Indian Novels in English: Politics of Global Reception and Awards.^[40]