Gossip Girl (Abridged audio) by Cecily von Ziegesar

Rating: WARTY!

If I’d known that Kirkus said of this: "Deliciously catty and immediately engrossing" I would never have pulled it off the library shelf. Kirkus pretty much never read a book they didn’t gush over, so their reviews are essentially useless, and I actively avoid books they recommend even if they sound interesting from the blurb. I didn't know beforehand that they'd praised this one. If I had, it would have saved me the time listening to it. Or perhaps, in this case, even had I known their take on it, I might still have got it because the big attraction for me was that it was read by Christina Ricci. After having fallen in love with her watching the Netflix Lizzie Borden movie and subsequent miniseries, I was severely disappointed to discover that her reading voice sucks! It’s a drab and monotonous voice which would have made even an exciting novel dreary, but in this case, the material she was reading was as bad as her reading voice proved to be.

Gossip Girl is purportedly about " a wickedly funny and risqué original novel about the provocative lives of New York City's most prestigious private school young adults", but in reality, it's about shallow mid-teens going about their spoiled-rotten but unutterably shallow and uninteresting lives. There is no "Sharp wit," no "intriguing characters," and no "high stakes", but there is oodles of cheap and boring "melodrama."

This audiobook was a waste of petroleum products. The best thing I can say about it is that it was abridged. If it had been abridged to "Chapter One The End" it would have been perfect.

You Know You Love Me by Cecily von Ziegesar

Rating: WARTY!

Which imbecile decided that it would be a really great idea to lard up audio books with random jarring, too loud music? Ugh! The music has nothing to do with the story and was never in the original typescript so get your heads out of your high hats and quit it already!

I had my doubts about the blurb on this one, but it sounded like it might be interesting if written the right way. What finally tipped my choice was that it was read by Christina Ricci, but this turned out to be a bad indicator. Her reading voice wasn't that great, but the reading material was the most flaccid dreck imaginable. It's part of the gossip girls series and I seriously and honestly fear for the mental welfare of people who find this trash remotely engaging.

The best thing I can say about it is that it was commendably short, but even then I skimmed the thing. The entire short story consisted of the most boring descriptions of snotty, spoiled high-schoolers getting ready to attend college, and consisted of boring interactions, tedious shopping trips, and uninventive partying.

The entire thing was sodden with vacuous, juvenile, and clueless talk of losing virginity before college, and this is the only thing the story had going for it, which amounted to nothing at all since nothing actually happened (or if it did, it must have been a quickie which I missed when skimming from track to track). I flatly refuse to recommend this or anything like it unless you're in dire need (and I do mean dire) of sleeping draft.