ShakespeareZombie

ShakespeareZombie

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Gossip Girl: Only in Your Dreams by Cecily von Ziegesar


I'm afraid that my time with the Gossip Girl series has come to an end with the 9th installment of the books. We follow our favorite over-privileged kids to summer break. Jenny Humphrey is in Europe on an art tour with her mom. She will be heading off to boarding school in the Fall. We do not hear any of her exploits in the book, except a GG post that she was spotted dancing on a table, which is neither here nor there.

Blair goes to England in hopes of spending some quality time with Lord Marcus. He is far too preoccupied with his cousin Camilla. Blair gets so fed up that she leaves England and returns home. Unfortunately, after all the money she racks up, including 10,000 pounds for a wedding dress and a pricey ticket to New York, Blair's mother makes her get a job.

Blair gets hired by designer Bailey Winter to do costumes for Breakfast at Fred's, the movie she and Serena auditioned for in the last book. She switches her fantasies from Audrey Hepburn movie star to behind-the-scenes fashionista. Later on, she moves yet again, this time into the Breakfast at Tiffany's apartment with Serena. Blair starts a new romance with downstairs neighbor and lawyer Jason, though she shows signs of missing Nate. We never get to find out what the deal was with Lord Marcus, whether Camilla was his kissing cousin or if he really had a fiancee or secret wife.

Serena is playing the Audrey role in Breakfast at Fred's. She sucks at acting and becomes frustrated that she wasn't instantly perfect at something. After they become roomies, Blair schools Serena in the fine art of Audrey Hepburn. Other than that, Serena lusts after co-star Thaddeus Smith, who is obviously gay.

Nate is doing manual labor on his coach's beach house, which was the only way the school would let him graduate after stealing coach's performance enhancing drugs. He meets a townie named Tawny. They talk, he brings her to the movie's wrap party so that everyone can mention how tacky she looks. Then she goes off to do things with Chuck Bass, things we never want to know. Nate also misses Blair some more.

Vanessa gets kicked out by her rock star sister and moves in with boyfriend Dan. She is doing filmography for Breakfast at Fred's but gets fired on her first day. The director disagreed with her style, namely focusing on ice melting in a glass instead of people talking. Then she gets a job as a nanny for the brothers of Blair's stalker and likely future sister-in-law.

Dan's storyline is my favorite out of all of them because Dan is the worst. He is working at a stupid indie bookstore where the sellers are purposely rude, because they're just that cool. He meets a blonde girl, Bree, who is looking to read Siddhartha, then one thing leads to another and they are doing naked yoga. Naked yoga is not a euphemism, by the way. Dan is hiding his fitness exploits with Bree from Vanessa, while also pretending he does something other than smoke and write awful poetry around Bree. Dan eventually breaks it off with both girls, but his creepy hippy father invites Vanessa to move in, so that situation isn't changing anytime soon.

And, just so I don't have to think up a closing paragraph, here's an example of Dan Humphrey's poetry, which was good enough to be published in the New Yorker:

Pure love. Pure lust. Trust trust.
Buddha was no Jesus.
Neither am I.
I'm just a guy.


Okay, it's not the entire poem. It still sucks, though. Dan Humphrey is, again, the worst .

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