Review: Gossip Girl, Psycho Killer

Title: Gossip Girl, Psycho Killer
Author: Cecily von Ziegesar
Publisher: Poppy
Release Date: October 3, 2011

Welcome to New York City's Upper East Side, where my friends and I live, go to school, play, and sleep-sometimes with each other. It's a luxe life, but someone's got to live it . . . until they die.

So begins Gossip Girl, Psycho Killer, a re-imagined and expanded slasher edition of the first groundbreaking Gossip Girl novel, featuring all new grisly scenes and over-the-top—Goodreads

Alright, I'll be honest—I've never read the Gossip Girl books. I watched the first couple seasons of the TV show until I couldn't stand it any longer—which was around season three or four, I think. Whenever it was that Hilary Duff joined the cast. NOT that I have anything against Hilary Duff—actually, I quite like her—but for some reason I just got really uninterested in the story lines at that point. 

ANYWAY. That's all to say that when I heard about Gossip Girl, Pyscho Killer I was very, very excited about it. I thought the idea of it was brilliant and very American Psycho (which I adore), and I just knew that the characters in Gossip Girl—which I always assumed was more of a satirical comment on how the kids of the wealthy live anyway—would be quite convincing as serial killers. 

Ok, for those of you who have read the Gossip Girl books, here's what you should know: this is more of a mash-up (à la Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) than it is a new book. In fact, Cecily von Ziegesar actually re-wrote the first book. Since I've never read them, I don't actually know how much of the text matches the first, but what I can tell you is this—Gossip Girl, Psycho Killer is delightfully rompy. 

Sometimes it's a little over the top, and the ways in which von Ziegesar decides to kill people can be a little, well, gross, but most of the time it's really funny and biting in its wit and evaluation of the 1% (as we're apparently calling the crazy-wealthy these days). 

So, if you're a little like me in that you enjoy ridiculously gory blood-lust every now and again, and you don't mind your serial killers wearing designer labels and using weapons like swords from the Met to exact their slightly detached vengeance, then you will greatly enjoy this. 

I'd also recommend this book for people who REALLY DISLIKE Gossip Girl. Since, you know, the characters all hate each other too and decide that they need to slaughter each other in magnificently evil ways. It really is very death-heavy. A LOT of characters die. Including a couple major characters. *grins wickedly*