Tag: Book Review

Unforgettable (It Girl #4) by Cecily von Ziegesar Review

~ Courtney Shek ~ Leave a comment

This was a fun one.

First of all, Callie and Jenny agree to be friends and put the whole Easy drama behind them which is cute and predictable. Also predictable: Callie and Easy getting back together. Yawn.

I personally do not see the appeal of Easy, I have said it before but I dislike him and it looks like he’s not going away anytime soon so yeah. Gotta deal with that. Naturally, Callie doesn’t see any issue with getting back together with Easy because he was her boyfriend to begin with and things just seemed right. Jenny is just going to have to suck it up.

Sadly for Callie, Jenny does not take the news well, especially because Callie didn’t even tell her, Jenny had to see them together to find out the truth. In turn this makes Jenny mad at Callie and their brief friendship is once again over. Not that sad about it to be honest, Callie is just as annoying as Easy, if not more lol.

Things aren’t all bad for Jenny though because she has taken an interest in freshman Julian. He made a good impression on everyone by just being a cool guy who goes along with what Heath says which makes him popular with the upperclassmen.

What Jenny doesn’t know is that Julian is actually having a fling with a certain It Girl.

Yep. The Tinsley Charmichael has feelings for a freshman and it’s a side of Tinsley I did not expect. She sneaks around with Julian and shows that she is just a normal teenage girl after all. While she may get bored of the usual boys who give her whatever she wants, she finds Julian’s playing hard to get refreshing.

What she doesn’t realise though is that he ain’t playing hard to get lol Julian just isn’t interested in her after he gets to know Jenny.

Sad for Tinsley but at the same time something about her getting exactly what she wants is boring. So we need this drama. Especially when this drama causes her to set fire to a barn where everyone is having a party. Oops.

Aside from all of this drama we also find out that Brett has feelings for someone new. The new person being her new bestie Kara. We love a queer story.

Brett and Kara are exploring things on the down low with the surprising help of Heath Farro. Our local fuck boy. I did not expect him to keep their secret. Even if he was doing it because he was getting pics from them on the side. Turns out he has one redeeming quality after all. Sort of.

I hope Brett and Kara last, if only because we need one relationship in this series that doesn’t immediately go to shit lol.

Anyway yeah that’s everything that happens here. Naturally Tinsley is out to frame Jenny for the barn fire because she saw Julian and Jenny kissing and that causes her to freak out and toss Julian’s lighter behind her without looking. So really Tinsley started the fire but she already admitted to doing E and got expelled so she definitely won’t be making that mistake again.

Callie and Easy could have also set the fire as they were actually in the barn when the fire started. Jenny caught them having a post-coital cigarette and was not too pleased about it. Though I don’t think they were the culprits.

So I suppose we will be finding out the fallout from the fire in the next one. I say as I am already halfway through the next book lol. I am just behind on blogging but these things happen. Anyway, my prediction is that everyone ends up finding out about Julian’s lighter and he is the one that gets kicked out. Jenny is a main character and there are still at least four books in this series so she definitely does not get kicked out. I can’t see Callie getting in trouble either but I wouldn’t hate if Easy goes down for this. But we’ll see.

I’m actually surprised at how short the timeline for these books is? Like they all happen immediately one after another, it’s been four books and we have only covered Jenny’s first month at this school. It’s kind of weird. It makes me wonder where we end to be honest. Another thing I imagine I’ll find out very soon at the rate I’m going through this books 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.