Some days you just have to read a cheesy, bad, embarrassing book. Gossip Girl’s I Will Always Love You by Cecily Von Ziegesar book definitely is one of those books. It was actually better then I thought it would be although I wasn’t expecting much.
So I have really low standards when it comes to Gossip Girl. I enjoy the spin off books (The It Girl Series) but never really enjoyed the actual Gossip Girl books. I thought it was neat how Cecily Von Ziegesar used today’s technology intertwined in her books (like the Gossip Girl website, text messages and emails). But for the most part I found the characters to be vapid and undeveloped and I found the plotlines just unbelievable.
I will have to say I like how the book actually looked at the different character’s Christmas and New Year’s Holiday celebrations for all four years of college. It was a neat concept. It shows how they characters were finding themselves and just growing up. I will have to say there are times, things were well done. Quite frankly, she was too ready to rush the events and call it a new school year in January and didn’t always age up the kids a full year. Let’s be honest, you can plan to go abroad for Junior year but that starts in the summer and to use that as a brush off for a girl you don’t want to see when she stars class in January simply doesn’t work. So it took away from the reality that she was trying to create and took away from a really cool concept.
There were times I loved the character growth and times I hated it. For the first time, I really started to connect with Blair and Serena. They weren’t just names on a page who I just couldn’t relate to. The anguish over love and not being able to connect with those that you love just worked. So did how they would get jealous and seem to try to deal with things. I got it. But at other times, the characters were just shallow and one dimensional. Especially Dan and Vanessa. They just fell flat and to be a fraction of the characters they once were.
One of the things I both love and hate about Cecily Von Ziegesar’s writing is the use of brand names and labels. At times it helps to serve the fact that they live an elite lifestyle and brands are a big deal. You want to make sure it’s good enough. It was fun to see stuff that I sell at Schiller’s were showing up in the book by brand (Marvis toothpaste, some of the shampoos, and etc). Kinda shows how Schiller’s does a great job at getting quality products. But at other times it drives me nuts to see sentences that will list a half dozen Brand names. I just start skimming the page and lose my connection to reality. It’s a bout balance when using brand names and while this Gossip Girl book was better then the other books I’ve tried to read but it was still too heavy in many scenes.
So in all, I would rank this book around a 3. It’s a great Gossip Girl but that’s like saying the Pirates are the best when compared to the Orioles, and the Expos (yes I know the Expos don’t exist anymore and are now the Nationals but they still stand out as a stinky baseball team). But there were some good concepts and it was a nice reprieve for a couple nights.
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