Gossip Girl (Gossip Girl Series #1) » (Abridged, 2 CDs, 2 hours)

Cecily von Ziegesar has always lived in New York City. She's already working on her next It Girl novel,as well as I Will Always Love You,a special Gossip Girl hardcover edition featuring the original cast, also coming November 2009, so be careful of what you do or say and who you're seen with...

Just who, and what, is Gossip Girl? The book: Gossip Girl is Cecily von Ziegesar's debut novel; a racy story involving a group of urban teenagers with a lot of money to burn. The setting: an elite NYC private school filled with kids born to every advantage—wealth, status, looks. They feel entitled, they're sophisticated, they're cosmopolitan, they're worldly. And they deal with the same problems kids deal with everywhere—friends, parents, drugs, sex, college, eating disorders, etc. The narrator: the anonymous Gossip Girl, who talks about them all online, using only first initials to identify her subjects. And all her readers—who ARE her subjects—keep on coming back for more. If Carrie Bradshaw from "Sex in the City" had a little sister, she would be Gossip Girl. Everyone who's anyone is talking about Gossip Girl.

Publishers Weekly

For anyone who's ever wished to be a fly on the wall observing a clique of super-rich, super-shallow teens on Manhattan's Upper East Side, this audiobook offers the perfect opportunity. Ricci has the easy, unaffected attitude to play cool observer/participant in a milieu of hard partying and harsh social climbing. As fans of her films might expect, Ricci nails the slang and contemporary phrasing. Talk of sex, alcohol and money abounds-replete with occasional expletives that make the raw language ring true. An e-mail note from Gossip Girl (read by deLuca), someone who is anonymously part of the scene, opens each chapter and, in an unusual twist, listeners can read similar entries or do their own dishing at www.gossipgirl.net. At the book's heart, the Blair-Nate-Serena triangle and all its tangents will likely have teens and young adults transfixed. The success of subsequent Gossip Girl print novels, in addition to the proliferation of new TV shows like Rich Girls and the recent documentary Rich Kids, indicate a continuing appetite for such fare. The Gossip Girls books have also been repackaged for adults, demonstrating their crossover appeal. All told, this sharp production adds some spice to the gossip-fiction menu. Ages 15-up. (Oct.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.