A review by ajlawford
I Will Always Love You, by Cecily Von Ziegesar

1.0

What a terrible end to a terrible series. I read the books because I like the show, little did I know how different they are! The first few books were okay, but after that it went steadily downhill. I tired of the same love triangle drama, only the year and semester being the difference between books. After well over a year of seeing the last in the series still sitting on my book shelf unread, I finally got around to reading it. Mostly I just wanted to find out if the Gossip Girl revealed in the books was the same as the show. Well spoiler alert, Gossip Girl never reveals her identity!! WTF I just tortured myself reading another book for no reward! Over than that massive failure, this book combined all that I hated about the series into one boring story. The amount of brand names being dropped was pathetic. Can't the author just say that a girl stepped out of her apartment, without a full run down of what she is wearing complete with which designer the garments are from? This happens every single time anything happens. *yawn*. The worse example of over branding was naming the brand of a refrigerator that someone gets a beer out of. Not only is that pathetically unnecessary, because it's clear the characters are rich and would have the best of everything, to repeat it the very next page is ridiculous overkill! The final book is life post high school. This time though, time moves forward in large unspecified months or years, trying to cram all of college into one book. Even the author knows the series is dead. I could practically write down the formula used to create the lackluster drama. Cycle though each main character pairing a boy and a girl up. Create said romance. Create said breakup. Repeat with different characters. Intersperse with Serena and Blair loving then hating each other. None of this is new material. I no longer care who ends up with who. I just want it to end. You could basically skip the first 11 books and just read this one and not miss a thing. Especially because there were constant recaps back to past story lines. Strip out the past, the brands, and the expected relationship dramas and this book has absolutely no substance. None at all.