Outside Reading

I just read The Carlyles and You Just Can't Get Enough, which are written by Annabelle Vestry, but are spin-offs of the Gossip Girl series created by Cecily Von Zeisegar. They were both fast easy reads, but were entertaining all the same. I picked them out because I used to read the Gossip Girl series, and I enjoyed them, and I absolutely love the Gossip Girl TV show. It was interesting reading these books for many reasons. The books are about a set of triplets who move to New York City, and go to the same school that the characters from the earlier books went to. Although the only character that is a continuation from the earlier series is Gossip Girl herself, when you’re reading The Carlyles books, you feel like you are reading a normal Gossip Girl book.
The Carlyle triplets, Avery, Owen, and Baby, move to New York from Nantucket, and in a way, they are taking the place of Blair and Serena and all their friends from the Gossip Girl series.
Owen is the oldest, and he settles in pretty quickly. He makes fast friends with Rhys Sterling through swim team, until he learns Rhys’ girlfriend of three years, Kelsey, is actually the girl that he had fallen in love with the previous summer. This complicates things immensely. Kelsey breaks up with Rhys when she finds out Owen is back in town, but Owen & Kelsey’s attempts at a secret relationship fail miserably. Instead, Owen decides to pretend date Jack Laurent, one of Avery & Baby’s classmates at Constance Billiard (Blair & Serena’s old school).
Avery doesn’t click so well in the city, and makes an enemy of Jack Laurent on the first day. Her desperate attempts to host parties, and become the most popular girl in school eventually land her the position of ‘SLOB’, which is basically class social president. By blackmailing Jack, she works her way up the social standings, but has yet to find the boy of her dreams.
Baby, the youngest Carlyle, is probably having the most fun in the city. She manages to get herself kicked out of Constance Billiard within the first week, and then has her mom get her back in when she realizes it probably wasn’t such a good idea. Despite the fact that she just broke up with her Nantucket boyfriend, she finds a whole new group of friends that she ends up having a blast with, and manages to steal Jack’s boyfriend, JP.
Overall, I really like the series as light, fun reading and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys the Gossip Girl show and books.