Month: July 2024

Reckless (It Girl #3) by Cecily von Ziegesar Review

~ Courtney Shek ~ Leave a comment

This one was not as exciting as I thought it was going to be. I think I was expecting more Gossip Girl-TV-esque drama with backstabbing and girl fights and rumour spreading. There was none of that.

Despite the fact Tinsley and Brett are sharing a room and hate each other as well as Callie and Jenny there is not a single hint of any drama from this. All girls tend to ignore each other as much as possible when in their assigned living spaces and that’s boring. I needed chaos and people messing with each other’s stuff. But nope. The most we got was Callie flinging Jenny’s hair ties all over the room. Lame.

What we did get in this book was two Dumbarton parties, a new girl added to the friend group and discovering Tinsley is not the calculating manipulating ice Queen I thought she was. Which is a little bit sad to be honest.

So yeah Heath has decided since it’s sponsor weekend or something like that and all the teachers are going to be too busy schmoozing to get school funding it was time to throw a huge keg rager. So he orders up some kegs and decides to store them in the girls’ dorm room until it is time to party.

Unfortunately for him, the girls decide to party a lot sooner than anticipated and have a rager on the roof. Which is all fun and games before a teacher discovers them and decides to lock the girls down in the dorm all weekend. So they have to stay inside. Which is totally fine because they still have a bunch more kegs hidden in one of the dorm rooms. So another party ensues.

And the boys can’t bear to miss out on the party action so they sneak into the Dumbarton dorm using tunnels underneath the school. Which is kind of fun. Again this vibe is very silly Gossip Girl universe.

All the drama unfolds at this party where all the girls have decided to raid each other’s closets and drink keg beer. First of all we are introduced to new girl Kara. She is a girl who Brett and Jenny have deemed the ‘girl in black’ until she speaks out and has a voice. Apparently she was nicknamed the Whale by Heath a few years ago because she was overweight and went into hiding ever since. Which is rude of Heath. But she ends up getting her own back by throwing beer over him and becoming friends with Brett, Callie and Jenny. Cute.

Jenny finds out through a game of I Never that Easy took Callie to dinner with his dad even though Jenny is his current girlfriend and Callie is his ex. Gross. Basically the girls stop hating each other after realising that Easy is the problem. I gotta say this was the most mature response to the situation. I was not expecting that. But also I am proud of them for realising they shouldn’t let this fuck boy come between them. Chicks before dicks and all that.

I hope Easy ends up choosing neither of them and going back to the art-hole he crawled out of he is actually annoying lol. I hate everytime we see anything from his POV. Like I get it, tortured artist boy might be in love with two girls but can’t make a decision. It’s boring. I don’t need it.

We also discover at this party that Tinsley is a virgin! Shocking and scandalous for the times but also just surprising because it’s been implied that she’s the kind of girl who has no issues hooking up. Turns out that’s not her, she has fun flirting with boys but often finds after they’ve kissed all the magic is gone. So she loves a chase but not being in actual relationships. Real.

Plus Tinsley is not really a “mean girl”. She gave off vibes that’s who she was but I guess she’s really just a normal teenager lol. She can be manipulative when she wants to be but she’s not giving off the same bitchy vibes of the girls on the Gossip Girl TV show. Which is sad because I wanted that. If anything this book showed she can be vulnerable as she may or may not be starting up something with a cute freshman boy.

Don’t know how to feel about this character development. I mean I guess it is realistic but it’s not exciting enough for me lol. So we’ll see if it lasts.

Also, Brett and her boyfriend Jeremiah break up which is surprising because I thought they’d be together forever. Turns out Jeremiah slept with someone while he and Brett were broken up and she’s pissed he lied. And to go along with that, the girl Jeremiah hooked up with snuck into the Dumbarton party to look out for him. She was trying to be a good friend by making sure Brett wasn’t going to hurt Jeremiah when in reality the opposite happened. And then this random girl ended up making out with Brandon in the tunnels lol.

And I think that covers everything. Now all the girls are angry at Tinsley since she’s the one who spilled the tea about Callie and Easy at dinner. Brett and Jenny have always disliked Tinsley but now even Callie is on the outs with her. So I guess it’ll be interesting to see what happens next. I assume Tinsley will be fine without Callie, she seems like she would be or at least appear to be when all she wants is her friends back. And then who knows if the other girls will forgive her?

Well I predict they do and it’ll probably be really easy since that’s how teenage girls work sometimes. Other times it goes the opposite way where they’ll hate each other forever but that doesn’t seem in the spirit of this book series. Anyway, I’m hoping for something fun next time. I think this series is going to continue being hit or miss for me as we go on.

I Tried to “BeReal” for a Week

~ Courtney Shek ~ Leave a comment

I feel like I’m writing a Buzzfeed article lol. But anyway, this is not sponsored and I was just bored last weekend so I thought I’d give BeReal a real chance.

I downloaded it once when it first came out to see what the craic was but honestly, I knew I wasn’t going to use it because all my days are very similar and also, I look trash 99% of the time and I was not interested in documenting that. But a couple of years ago, I did a ‘1 second everyday’ video and was thinking of doing another one next year. And so I thought maybe I should try out BeReal because that’s a very similar concept, except instead of a video, it’s a photo and instead of me deciding when to take the video clip, my phone will notify me to do it.

So off we went to download BeReal. Now I know the whole point of BeReal is to “be real” but from my experience people still will do the opposite. A couple of years ago when I was at comic con, there were some people who asked in Q&A sessions of the celebrities would be a part of their BeReal. And I imagine like other social media, people only want to post when they are actually doing something interesting.

So I can see why no one really talks about the app anymore. And also why no one I know in real life uses it lol. In the week I used it only one person was active. So this was disappointing. Only because there’s no point for me to go on the app everyday if no one else is uploading.

But I decided to give it a go and try my best to upload as soon as the notification went off and try to be my true authentic self. Disclaimer – I think I only ever made it on time once lol. To be fair, each time it was only a few minutes late rather than hours. It’s not that I am trying to stage anything, I just didn’t see the notification.

Though I was finding myself wondering everyday when the notification was going to go off. I didn’t know round what times of day it would go off or what I was going to be doing. Not that I was doing anything exciting. It was just interesting to see what sort of times you would be notified at.

I got a good mix of morning and evening though the morning ones were at the weekend and I was in bed lol. Other ones I was out and about or at work. Nothing crazy. I do wish my friends used it though because I would be interested to see what they would be doing. Part of the fun is seeing what everyone else is up to in the same moment you are but I didn’t have that so was definitely not getting the full experience. So this is why I’ll probably not be using BeReal long term.

I suppose I could just ask my friends to use it, but they probably won’t. They barely post on Instagram as it is and I’m supposed to convince them to do this? Highly unlikely lol.

But overall it was an amusing week with something new going on. I am still using BeReal at the minute, but the novelty is wearing off. I think I might try to use it for a year and see how it goes but after that I’ll probably delete it. If anything this app takes documenting your life a little too far, who needs a photo from every single day of their life? I know I don’t. Not everyday is that exciting lol.

Still, I’m glad I have it a go. And I applaud the developers for trying something new. I’m not sure what the next big social media thing will be or even if I want to be a part of it but I’m interested to see where it goes. But for now I’ll stick with my Facebook/Instagram/Twitter. And the occasional blog post (when I make an effort lol).

Notorious (It Girl #2) by Cecily von Ziegesar Review

~ Courtney Shek ~ Leave a comment

It Girl Tinsley Charmichael has returned to Waverly and she is wasting no time settling back into her role as the Serena van der Woodsen of the school. Well actually, she gives off more Blair vibes to me in terms of her leadership styles but there is no mistaking she is the It Girl everyone is pining over.

This book was so good. I really enjoyed it! I am not saying it’s literary art but in terms of storyline, it was fun and gave me true Gossip Girl silly vibes. And I think it was better than the first book since we got all the introductory awkward stuff out of the way we can just dive into the story.

First of all, I want to say, I can’t believe Tinsley was expelled because she was the only one who told the truth about the E thing. Like I was not expecting that, I thought for sure maybe Brett or Callie had sold her out or something more dramatic than her confessing lol. If anything it seemed dumb of Tinsley to confess to being on drugs in the first place, it doesn’t seem like the kind of girl she is. But I guess it doesn’t matter too much because she is back.

She is back and looking forward to returning to her normal life with her two best friends, Callie and Brett but only one of them is happy to see her. Callie is the Blair Waldorf to Tinsley’s Serena and I’m not going to lie, I kind of hate their friendship.

Callie is a hot mess in this book because her boyfriend Easy has dumped her for her roommate Jenny Humphrey. So all she does is mope around and hang on to Tinsley’s every word. Not to mention the fact she has an eating disorder which they mention a lot. Apparently, Callie just doesn’t eat and is very thin and it’s very concerning. I don’t know if it is going to be like Blair’s eating disorder in the original book series where it’s mentioned once or never again…I mean this is mentioned quite a few times which makes me hope it gets resolved. But also seems unlikely. Either way it’s alarming and I don’t love it.

On top of Callie being Tinsley’s lackey, she is desperate for Tinsley’s approval which lead her into almost having a threesome with Tinsley and Heath?! Ick. Heath is the school’s Chuck Bass figure and nothing about that is OK.

But with Callie by her side egging her on, Tinsley thinks she can do anything. Including run a secret society and dictate who the girls in the society should hook up with. Not going to lie, the secret society idea was fun. I liked this but it was short-lived when everyone gets caught at the Ritz by the Dean lol.

So the ending of the book was kind of silly and abrupt I liked it. It reminded me of reading the Gossip Girl books when things would wrap up kind of nicely and there wasn’t really consequences. Because that’s just the world we’re in. Not to mention Callie and Tinsley seeing that the Dean was having an affair with another faculty member – the scandal. We live.

Though not everything is roses and sunshine for Tinsley and Callie as they are being split up by the Dean. He has decided to put Callie and Jenny in one room and Brett and Tinsley in another. Yikes.

Tinsley and Brett are on the outs because Brett didn’t tell Tinsley about her thing with Mr Dalton. Which thankfully didn’t actually go anywhere because Mr Dalton dumped Brett before anything could happen. Sadly, he dumped her for Tinsley because he’s icky like that.

Tinsley decided that because Brett wouldn’t tell her her secret, the logical thing to do would be to flirt with Mr Dalton instead and make Brett jealous. the plan backfired though because Brett wasn’t interested in getting Dalton back, she actually wants to get back with her boyfriend Jeremiah. So Tinsley hooked up with a teacher just because, well, she also did it for Callie because she thought she could use her relationship with Dalton to get Callie’s ex, Easy expelled. That didn’t work out for her either.

Mainly because Easy saw Tinsley and Mr Dalton together and he decided they needed to be exposed. So Dalton ended up getting fired. Serves him right for being a creep.

The only other thing going on in this book is Easy and Jenny getting together which is cute. However, they probably won’t last long if Jenny now has to room with Callie full-time. The girls might end up killing each other because Callie is furious about Jenny swooping in and stealing her man. But that’s what we love about teen dramas.

All in all a fun read. I’m looking forward to learning more about Tinsley and how she operates and I am interested to see how all the girls cope with their new living arrangements. If anything I thought more drama would have come from the four of them sharing a room but that seemed fine when Jenny and Brett spent as little time in the room as possible lol. But oh well, things can’t always be as dramatic as we want them to be. Looking forward to where we go next.

The It Girl by Cecily von Ziegesar Review

~ Courtney Shek ~ Leave a comment

It’s been forever since I blogged anything. But I am back to start a new review series on the Gossip Girl spin-off book series called the It Girl. This series follows Little Jenny Humphrey as she leaves her old life in NYC and attends boarding school.

So I don’t really remember a lot about the Gossip Girl book series other than I feel like Jenny wasn’t actually mentioned that much. Also that the series was quite unserious and there wasn’t really a plot it was just rich people doing scandalous and frivolous things just because.

This book series however has more of a plot which I am enjoying and I had some thoughts about reading that I thought I’d stick in a blog post instead of my usual Goodreads reviews. Plus I do want to try to get back into blogging a bit more so why not start with something easy?

First of all, one thing I was surprised about was all the things Jenny had gotten up to in the Gossip Girl series because I certainly didn’t remember any of it lol. It was also weird to read Jenny as this naive freshman who was just always in the wrong place at the wrong time and got herself into these crazy situations that lead to her expulsion from Constance. Like that is not the Jenny Humphrey I know and love.

The Jenny Humphrey I know and love will always be the TV show adaptation Jenny. Early seasons Jenny vs Blair had my full attention back when I watched the Gossip Girl TV show and to this day, one of my all time favourite episodes is Blair’s sleepover from season one. So to see Jenny being this shy and awkward girl trying to make a new start at a boarding school was weird.

So let’s dive into Jenny and her new life at Waverly shall we?

As always with a new book series there was a bunch of new characters thrown at me and it took me a while to figure out who mattered and who did not. As this book series is a spin-off we do not have Gossip Girl commentary between chapters, instead we have snippets of IM chats between students so lots of names and gossip are thrown around early on.

But I sussed the main people we care about are:

  • Callie and Brett – Jenny’s new roommates and supposed best friends. Though an incident last year saw their third best friend, Tinsley, expelled while those two got off scot-free.
  • Easy – Callie’s boyfriend but also Jenny’s new love interest? Drama.
  • Brandon – Callie’s ex who is bitter because Easy stole Callie from him (supposedly)
  • Eric Dalton – new teacher and someone Brett is definitely interested in
  • Heath – basically the Chuck Bass of the school

Everyone else was just noise and names of people who kind of blended together in my head while reading lol

In terms of the storylines this book I thought they were good. A nice dip into this new world we are in and the dynamics. I gotta say I wasn’t so much interested in Jenny as I was everyone else lol. Like Jenny’s story is fine, new girl at a new school trying to make an impression and falling for her rooommate’s boyfriend Easy like…fine.

But I wanted to know more about Brett and Callie and what happened with Tinsley. Basically Brett and Callie are fighting the whole book but like not fighting? More like ignoring each other and being weird because they both think the other ratted on Tinsley and got her expelled. Turns out neither of them said anything about Tinsley and so they end up becoming friends again lol.

I’m not going to lie, I think the author did a great job at portraying the thoughts these girl’s had about one another and just about teenage girl life in general. We’ve all had those times where you want to be normal with your friend but she’s acting weird so you act weird etc. it happens. Also you just start and stop being friends over the dumbest things. It’s so real.

As for the boy drama – well, I don’t think Easy and Callie should be together – they give off very Nate and Blair vibes. In that Easy doesn’t really wanna be with Callie and starts flirting with Jenny and liking it. Meanwhile Callie told Easy she loved him over the summer and he didn’t say it back. And that’s very similar to how Nate and Blair were in Gossip Girl – moreso on TV than in the books but yeah that’s what I get. And so I am waiting for that to just stop being a thing.

I’m still not sure what the vibes with Brandon are other than he’s still in love with Callie. He seems like the nicest and most normal guy around to be honest. Don’t know how much he will be around but he was friendly enough with Jenny and seems open to getting back together with Callie so we see what happens.

And then there’s the Brett and Eric thing which you know gives me the ick because it’s another teacher/student relationship and we frown upon those. Like especially in this one because Eric clearly points out the age difference and then tries to justify it by saying when they’re older it won’t matter as much. Ick. Brett thankfully doesn’t have sex with him but she almost did and who’s to say she won’t? I hope she doesn’t.

But overall, I enjoyed this a lot. It’s easy to read – despite all the outdated designer and fashion references that go over my head. Plus I do enjoy petty teenage rich kid drama. It’s the basis of most of my TV show loves lol. So I am looking forward to seeing what happens next, especially because this mysterious Tinsley has reappeared after her expulsion. She’s already giving Serena van der Woodsen vibes and we haven’t even met her yet.