I genuinely have no idea why I enjoyed this so much... the characters were bitchy, vapid and, in the case of Gossip Girl, creepy. As others have said, the characters are also more like caricatures of 16-year old rich kids than real people but I took it as a satire and enjoyed it much more from that point of view than if I had expected something else. The book also captured the vibe of the show far more than I thought it would, and despite the ridiculousness of literally everything that happens I loved it.