So, I’m embarrassed that I am a 23-year-old reviewing a Gossip Girl book. Sometimes, though, when things are stressful, I just have to read something totally mindless and shallow and this was exactly what I needed. These books are the ultimate guilty pleasure–frothy and silly and easy. I was a huge fan of this series back when I was fourteen or fifteen, and read most of the books back then, but this one came out after I’d moved on from the series.
It Had to Be You is a prequel to the Gossip Girl series, taking place in the year before the events of the first book. To the uninitiated, the premise of the series is that an anonymous, omnipresent person runs a blog narrating the goings-on of a group of spoiled, extremely wealthy New York teenagers. We’ve got Blair, the uptight Park Avenue princess, and her best friend, Serena, a gorgeous and flighty socialite-in-training, both of whom are in love with their childhood friend, Nate. There’s also Dan, a Brooklyn hipster with an unrequited crush on Serena (who doesn’t even know he exists), his younger sister Jenny, who is also obsessed with Serena (and obsessed with growing breasts), and Vanessa, a transplant from rural Vermont who falls head-over-heels for Dan. Got that?
Cannonball Read V 