Flip

Flip by Martyn Bedford.

I am sooo not a morning person. But I'd have to admit, I've seldom woken to a day worse than fourteen-year-old Alex's. His eyelashes flutter open not only to a room not his (don't know those curtains...), but an unfamiliar body. Which he's inhabiting. It's name is Flip, short for Philip. Whose consciousness, or soul, or what have you, is nowhere to be found. Thereby leaving Alex thrown in at the deep end of the pool, and no one believes he can't swim. He tries to tell the strangers at the breakfast table that he's not Flip, but that goes about as well as you might imagine. So he slogs through the motions of Flip's life. It's weird, being popular, having a girlfriend, being expected to perform well at sports. Having a lot more, ahem, chest hair etc., than his true self. What has happened to him? Why did his real mother's co-worker chew him out when he tried to reach her at work? Where did six months go? Is he going to be trapped in a body not his own forever?