It Girl 3

Man, I love this one. 

It's trustee weekend and parents are in town, including Easy's dad, who demands Callie's presence at dinner, even after Easy explains they've broken up. He even says she'll come as his guest then. Not wanting to subject Jenny to his relentless father, Easy asks Callie to go...and neither says a word to Jenny. Now this would have been fairly easy to explain. All Easy would have had to do is say his father is a total hardass and he wanted Callie there, so Easy wanted to save Jenny the awkwardness of that being her first meeting with his dad. It would still have been odd but it would have shown he cared about Jenny properly. But Easy is a jackass so he hides it all. And then after seeing how well Callie handled herself with his dad, Easy suddenly has feelings for her again and then he's all torn for the rest of the book. 

Most of the action (aside from that dinner and the one between the dean, Brandon's dad, Brandon, Julian and Tinsley) occurs within the Dumbarton walls...or on its roof. Tinsley's newest Cafe Society party takes place on the roof because Heath decided to have six half kegs delivered to Dumbarton and Tinsley got him and Julian to put one on the roof. Only the girls are caught and because they fled to their rooms, none were caught red-handed and EVERYONE in the dorm is on lockdown all weekend. 

On lockdown. With dorm mistress Pardee busy with trustee activities. With five remaining half kegs under the bed of the quiet girl on the first floor. Can you say party? The boys use the convenient tunnels underneath the school to sneak into Dumbarton and the shenanigans are on. 

Let's check in with our couples. 

Jenny/Easy: Easy is smitten with Jenny again once he's around her, but when she goes to get them beer, there's a "teacher alert" (it's not actually a teacher) and he hides in Callie's closet. She finds him there and is surprised but they end up making out. 

Brett/Jeremiah: Jeremiah snuck in not through the tunnels and the pair are about to have sex when they're interrupted by the not-a-teacher and Brandon, who are going around trying to get everyone to come out of their rooms again. 

Tinsley/Julian: After flirting all book, they get together in the end but Tinsley wants it kept secret. She's partially worried about the rumor mill learning she's dating a freshman but mainly, she hates relationships and feels trapped once she's in one, so she wants to avoid the labels. 

Everyone gathers for a game of I Never and all the secrets spill.

Brett and Tinsley are virgins. Everyone jumps on Tinsley because she's apparently told a lot of stories about her experience. She gets mad and clarifies that she never specifically said she had sex, although Easy remembers an instance of bragging where she may have. Not that he speaks up. It's just his brief PoV time. Easy is more interested that worldly Brett is a virgin, starting to put together that most of Brett's worldliness is a facade. 

Angry about the attention on her, Tinsley guns for Easy, spilling his secret about taking his ex to dinner with his dad instead of his current girlfriend. Now EVERYONE involved gets pissed at Tinsley including Callie. 

Jenny, who fled upstairs upon this revelation, is followed by Kara, the quiet girl whose room got the kegs hidden in it. More on her shortly. They talk and then Brett comes in, followed shortly by Callie. All four girls discuss how much men suck. Callie had a scene with Easy before this where she basically told him off, too. Good. I lied when I said I never liked Callie. I like her in the latter half of this book. 

So most of the main girls are bonding and Tinsley is left out but she's with Julian so she doesn't care. 

Now for character details. 

CALLIE: Now it's mentioned Callie has an accent. She also has asthma but somehow smokes a lot. It's mentioned she can't have as many cloves as she likes but she can somehow smoke regular cigarettes? Eh. And she's gotten a haircut and indulged in a lot of retail therapy. 

PARKER: Parker is a senior who is mentioned in passing a couple times. I think he was mentioned in the first book. He's from either France or Belgium and is in Jenny's art class. It may have been clear which country he's from in the first book but I was too lazy to look it up so I'm borrowing Jenny's not knowing. 

RIFAT: Tall. Volleyball captain. Dark curly short hair. Described as "Natalie Portman in V for Vendetta" short but Natalie sports a shaved head in that movie. If Rifat has curls, her head isn't shaved. Rifat is described as having dark skin so I think she may be black with an Arabic name but it isn't said. 

ALAN: Ever-changing Alan is now blond. Big crush on Alison.

Czech cover

And finally, KARA: My baby. Kara is the quiet girl, dubbed the "Girl in Black" by Brett and Jenny, that lives on the first floor and is also in Jenny's art class. She used to be fat and Heath bullied her about it so she left school, lost weight and came back. He didn't even recognize her and she throws beer on him in a great scene. She has light brown hair with a honey tone or something like that and large "greenish-brown" eyes. Kara isn't one of the brand-wearing girls, though her mother is actually a designer. That's her on the cover, sporting the dress Tinsley told her to wear, though she changes into something that feels more her later in the party. Kara loves comic books, is an artist, and is good at saying what she thinks. She can be bold and sassy, sarcastic and supportive. I love that she got a cover so early, although I do think Brett should have been on this cover, Tinsley on the fourth, and then Kara fifth. But if we're skipping ahead for anyone, Kara deserves it. She's a total badass.

It Girl 2

Ugh, Callie gets a cover and Brett never does. Callie is my least fave of the main cast by a lot. I never liked her. 

So the book begins with Tinsley back on campus. This time I'm going to do a quick summary and then list off some character details after. 

Tinsley is expecting a warm welcome from her BFFs Callie and Brett. Callie semi-gives her one but Brett is oddly cold. She's worried Tinsley is going to tell people she's nouveau riche from NJ. So instead of a nice reunion, lines are split with Callie and Tinsley on one side and Brett and Jenny, who Tinsley was annoyed to find in her bed, on the other. 

Brett tries to continue on with Eric Dalton, but after hearing rumors about the pair and being pissed they weren't directly from Brett, Tinsley sets her sights on him. And succeeds. It takes her like maybe half an hour to win him over, he dumps Brett, and ends up meeting Tinsley in NYC to hook up. Sex is not explicitly mentioned but it's implied Tinsley is quite experienced because she gets infatuated easily and then gets bored. (This is answered next book.)

Meanwhile, Easy dumps Callie, insisting it isn't because of Jenny, but it doesn't take long for he and Jenny to gravitate together. They have an easy (no pun intended) chemistry that makes them the most likeable couple of the options so far.  But Jenny swears there's nothing going on to Callie and the others. Bad idea. 

After seeing the boys, who gave her a much better welcome back, come out of the nearby woods but not say what they were doing, Tinsley gets the idea to form an all-girl secret society that Callie dubs Cafe Society. They let Brett, Jenny and a handful of other girls in, and immediately Tinsley starts setting rules like no boyfriends but hook-ups are okay. They invite the local hot pizza guy to a party and take turns making out with him. This is right after Jenny and Easy kissed on a special date so she feels bad about it but does it to placate Tinsley, who then spreads the rumor about it and Easy gets upset. 

Easy and Jenny sneak off to NYC where he runs into Tinsley. Tinsley sees him with Jenny but then Jenny and Easy see Tinsley with Eric Dalton. Easy tells Brett and they plot to take Dalton down. On her visit to his house, Brett spied a bag of weed and she tells the dean, forcing Dalton to resign. Tinsley is pissed but without the thrill of Dalton being forbidden fruit, she's over it really fast. 

However, Tinsley tells Callie that Jenny and Easy are together and Callie is predictably mad. I don't like Callie because she's manipulative, a follower, and wayyyyy too insecure, but she is right in being upset about this. Jenny and Easy both did lie to her. 

Brett and Jenny are kicked out a Cafe Society, while those girls and Heath's group of boys have a party in a Boston hotel. Easy, grumpy about the Jenny kissing someone else rumor, goes along, getting a ride with Brett's ex Jeremiah. At Waverly, a drunk Jenny sneaks Brett's phone and calls Jeremiah. Oh, forgot to mention there was a cute scene between him and Brett earlier in the book. They're a cute couple, too. Jenny tells Jeremiah she knows Brett loves him because she loves someone, too. Jeremiah tells Easy and the boys drive back to Waverly for cute reunions with the girls. At the party, it's a drunken free for all that ends with Tinsley, Callie and Heath out on the balcony in their underwear. Who's on the next balcony? The dean...and their dorm mistress! Who is NOT married to the dean, by the way. The dean orders them back to the school and says if they're not there by 9, they'll be punished. They don't make it and the punishment is pretty dramatic. The girls are being split up. Callie stays with Jenny in their third floor room, while Brett and Tinsley are booted down to the first floor. Yup. Both warring pairs are stuck together. 

Czech cover

So where are we on characters? I'll won't mention everyone, just share new details. 

TINSLEY: Oh, Tinsley. Tinsley is my girl. Tinsley is tall and naturally tan with long, thick black hair, but her crowning feature is her eyes, which are so blue that they look violet. Her model mother is part Portuguese and part Danish, I think it was. Tinsley spent summer break making a documentary in South Africa with her dad, which got her reinstated at the school. Tinsley is a fun character because she is absolutely, unapologetically who she is and I like that. Tinsley is massively chaotic. She thrives on drama, attention, and having a good time. She manipulates but mostly for the sole purpose of entertaining  herself. She's definitely a bad girl, though she does have a sweet side, particularly with damaged Callie, and I love her for both those things. 

BRETT: Brett said she was 17 in the first book, but in this one Jeremiah describes her as 16. Not sure if she was aging herself up for Dalton because why lie when he has student records? I think it was a bad writing moment. There are a few of these little hiccups, like in this book, Benny's hair is in a French braid but a couple pages later, it's a ponytail. 

JEREMIAH: Speaking of Jeremiah, he has longish auburn hair and blue eyes. 

HEATH: Is a comic geek. This will be important soon. 

ALISON: Is an artist and she's Korean. 

ALAN: Had a short brown crew cut in the first book. Now he has "bushy" brown hair and is scruffy. 

TEAGUE: Is a guy. 

LON: Scholarship kid that's supposedly quite experienced. He was mentioned in the first book but had an appearance in this one. Dating Tricia, who I think I left out of the last list. 

VERENA: First appearing in this book. A senior from Buenos Aires with a short pixie cut. 

JULIAN: Freshman. Very tall, deep voice, dark blonde hair long enough to put into a ponytail. He'll get more screentime soon. 

Next book we get to meet Kara! My other favorite character besides Tinsley. 

The It Girl

Gossip Girl spawned a bunch of similar YA titles about rich, over-privileged, mostly white teens and their drama. My favorite of the bunch was this series: The It Girl, featuring Jenny Humphrey from the Gossip Girl series. It Girl was touted as being created by the same author as Gossip Girl but we all know this shit was ghostwritten like crazy and that's fine by me. 

The series follows sophomore Jenny as she makes her way from NYC to Waverly Academy, a posh boarding school in Rhinecliff, NY. Probably the best way to get the plot explained is just listing off all the characters and what they're up to. 

JENNY: Jenny is trying to reinvent herself from a series of bad decisions and drama that got her kicked out of her old school. But she immediately falls into the same bad habits because let's face it, she loves partying and cute boys. She's also an artist and she's genuinely a sweet character, so you have to like her. Jenny has curly brown hair, she's super short, and she's got a DD chest, all of which combine to get her a lot of attention. Jenny is rooming with juniors Callie and Brett.

CALLIE: Callie's mother is the governor of Georgia, though she's never mentioned as having a Southern accent. She's from Atlanta. Tall and skinny with long strawberry-blonde hair. Callie is dating Easy but when he sneaks into the room and then a frustrated Callie flees, Easy plops himself on Jenny's bed wearing only his boxers, and they get caught by one of the dorm supervisors. Callie's main plot is that she's manipulating Jenny to take the fall for her in the Easy incident because Callie, Brett and their former roommate Tinsley all got caught on E the year before, and she's worried about getting kicked out and having to go to Atlanta public school. Callie is a very manipulative character, called out on this by both Easy and Brett. She's very difficult to like. 

Polish cover. I like the color.

BRETT: Brett has my favorite look of anyone in this series aside from Tinsley. And I'm still mad all these years later that she never got a cover. That's Jenny there on the cover for this first book. Callie is on the second but Brett? Never gets shown. Maybe they couldn't find a model so specific. Brett has a sleek chin-length bob that's bright red, "pale, milky-white skin," "almond-shaped" green eyes, seven gold hoops in one ear, and "both her nose and chin came to mischievous-looking points." Easy describes her later as having a "wide-jawed, wide-eyed beautiful face, a little like Mandy Moore's." She sounds like a funky fairy and I've always been disappointed they didn't try to replicate her. A lot of the later books use cover models that don't even match characters. Anyway, Brett's parents are embarrassingly nouveau riche and none of her friends know. She's dating a jock from the neighboring school but gets a teacher crush on her 6-years-older new advisor, who happens to be from a super rich family, and ends up dumping her younger boyfriend and almost hooking up with him. These YA books always have this not-quite-sex thing going on. Most of the couples have been naked together but not actually had sex. 

BRANDON: Callie's ex. Obsessed with grooming and sensitive so a lot of the guys think he's gay. Easy "stole" her from him at a party over a year ago and he's not over Callie yet. He's nice but also too nice. It's annoying. But at least he's there for Jenny a few times when she needs an ear. He's a blond.

HEATH: Also blond, only messier. Heath is the school's male slut, even called Pony because he gets as much ass as one. 

EASY: Horse-riding Kentucky artist boy. Almost hooked up with Tinsley before getting with Callie. They were one of those naked together but no sex pairings, though not an actual couple. Why he is with Callie is beyond me. I don't love Easy because he's always into some kind of trouble and blows off a lot of stuff, but anyone can see the uptight, neurotic, jealous Callie is not a good fit for him. Hair so brown it's almost black, blue eyes, tan. He's got some kind of accent, according to Jenny, so he can't sound overtly Southern. Everyone knows what a Southern accent is. 

JEREMIAH: Brett's doomed boyfriend from neighboring St. Lucius.

Those are the main players. I'll do a quick run through of the others, mostly for my own happiness. I'm trying to keep tabs on what people look like because maybe it will help me make guesses at who some of the later cover models are supposed to be, if anybody.

YVONNE: "Thin birdlike girl with a British accent." Won't be on a cover, poor thing. Nott a popular girl.

BENNY: From Philadelphia. "Pretty in a horsey way." Tall, lithe, thick brown hair, big brown eyes. Major gossip.

RYAN: Very tall boy with a nose ring. His name is Ryan Reynolds. I always snicker about it.  

ALISON: "Short Asian girl with pigtails." This isn't clarified as her but my memory is telling me Alison was the Asian girl. 

CELINE: Olive skin, straight black hair. Field hockey captain alongside Callie. 

SAGE: Ice blonde. Went on safari. Wears too much glitter eyeshadow.

ALAN: Stoner guy. Short brown crew cut. 

EMILY: Gossiped in one of the IM transcriptions. Nothing else on her.

HELENA: Sage's friend. Into theater. Blonde.

TEAGUE: I can't remember if this is a guy or a girl! Future books will tell.

I think that's everyone except for Tinsley because she's not there. Yet. But she will be. 

All's well that ends well. Easy takes the fall for the incident in the girls' room and is put on probation. Again. He's a legacy so he's hard to kick out. Brett and Callie finally discuss the Tinsley drama from last year. Each suspected the other set up Tinsley to take the fall but Tinsley apparently did it all on her own. But she's being allowed back after all. Yay. I love Tinsely. Brett and Jeremiah are broken up. Easy and Callie are basically broken up. Easy and Jenny genuinely like each other. I think that's it.