July 22, 2002
College interviews, romantic troubles and a fancy wedding photographed for Vogue
dominate this second installment of von Ziegesar's frothy but fun series about rich Manhattan prep school kids and the gossip Web site tracking their lives. Blair Waldorf's mother is marrying her "seriously tacky" boyfriend on Blair's birthday and has chosen the bulimic overachiever's former best friend Serena as a bridesmaid (Blair will be maid of honor). Meanwhile, "hunky" Nate avoids Blair (he's secretly seeing chesty Jenny Humphrey), and the compounded stress makes her act like a "freakshow" during her Yale interview. Blonde bombshell Serena is disturbed by poet Dan's intense affections, struggles through her own interview at Brown and scores first prize in a school film contest. The plot culminates at the wedding, where the girls' boy troubles come to a head. As with her Gossip Girl, von Ziegesar creates a complete world: the characters get drunk, shop and indulge in spa treatments—plus, the film contest prize is two tickets to Cannes. While this is still strictly a guilty pleasure, the story lines are better developed in this volume and the characters show more growth. But it's their outrageous lifestyles and antics—and the snide omniscient narrator—that will keep readers turning the pages. Ages 15-up.
November 10, 2003
For anyone who's ever wished to be a fly on the wall observing a clique of super-rich, super-shallow teens on Manhattan's Upper East Side, this audiobook offers the perfect opportunity. Ricci has the easy, unaffected attitude to play cool observer/participant in a milieu of hard partying and harsh social climbing. As fans of her films might expect, Ricci nails the slang and contemporary phrasing. Talk of sex, alcohol and money abounds—replete with occasional expletives that make the raw language ring true. An e-mail note from Gossip Girl (read by deLuca), someone who is anonymously part of the scene, opens each chapter and, in an unusual twist, listeners can read similar entries or do their own dishing at www.gossipgirl.net
. At the book's heart, the Blair-Nate-Serena triangle and all its tangents will likely have teens and young adults transfixed. The success of subsequent Gossip Girl print novels, in addition to the proliferation of new TV shows like Rich Girls
and the recent documentary Rich Kids
, indicate a continuing appetite for such fare. The Gossip Girls books have also been repackaged for adults, demonstrating their crossover appeal. All told, this sharp production adds some spice to the gossip-fiction menu. Ages 15-up.
October 1, 2002
Gr 9 Up-In the spirit of Gossip Girl (Little, Brown, 2002) comes You Know You Love Me, which deals with the same New York City friends. The novel runs much like a soap opera, except that the main characters are all rich and snobby chic 17-year-olds who want what they want and let nothing get in the way. Blair's mother has just announced that she will marry a short, stubby man of high society, Cyrus Rose, after a two-month courtship, and Blair must deal with a whole new family life, including Aaron, a dreadlocked hippie stepbrother. She has disowned her best friend, Serena, who slept with her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend, Nate. He has begun to return the affections of ninth-grader Jennifer, whose brother, a hopeless romantic, is pining over Serena. Gossip Girl is a chat room for relaying information to and about the group. A great read for those who like romance and drama related in a sassy manner, complete with obscenities and some alcohol, drugs, and sex.-Nicole M. Marcuccilli, Glenview Public Library, IL
Copyright 2002 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
January 21, 2002
At a New York City jet-set private school populated by hard-drinking, bulimic, love-starved poor little rich kids, a clique of horrible people behave badly to one another. An omniscient narrator sees inside the shallow hearts of popular Blair Waldorf, her stoned hottie of a boyfriend, Nate, and her former best friend Serena van der Woodsen, just expelled from boarding school and "gifted with the kind of coolness that you can't acquire by buying the right handbag or the right pair of jeans. She was the girl every boy wants and every girl wants to be." Everyone wears a lot of designer clothes and drinks a lot of expensive booze. Serena flirts with Nate and can't understand why Blair is upset with her; Blair throws a big party and doesn't invite Serena; Serena meets a cute but unpopular guy; and a few less socially blessed characters wonder about the lives of those who "have everything anyone could possibly wish for and who take it all completely for granted." Intercut with these exploits are excerpts from www.gossipgirl.net (the actual site launches in February), where "gossip girl" dishes the dirt on the various characters without ever revealing her own identity amongst them. Though anyone hoping for character depth or emotional truth should look elsewhere, readers who have always wished Danielle Steel and Judith Krantz would write about teenagers are in for a superficial, nasty, guilty pleasure. The book has the effect of gossip itself—once you enter it's hard to extract yourself; teens will devour this whole. The open-ended conclusion promises a follow-up. Ages 15-up.