It is December in the Upper East Side and you know what that means? Not Christmas, or family, or any of that normal stuff, but New Year Eve, in which Chuck Bass is hosting his annual party and you are all invited! With our people flying the world off on their own adventures it is time for them all to meet up at Chuck’s and go over those happy years we all thought they left behind. With unanswered questions like would Dan and Vanessa make it, will Blair and Serena make up, and what on earth happen to Nate, all that and more will be answered in this holiday special as this book take you the end of December in New York for the next four years.

Blair is in love with Pete, her library met Yale boyfriend, whom she ditched Christmas in sunny LA for. He is exactly who she wanted to be with, an academic Yale student who would rather cuddle her and watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s in bed than go to a party. When his family jets off to Costa Rica without her with the ‘No ring, No bring’ rule, Blair finds herself in New York City for New Years. With Serena, still is there working on her next big film, Blair eventually runs into her and they make up. After all Nate ran out on both, leaving them both broken hearted. With our little sailor eventually comes home, he must choose once again between Blair and Serena, and by the time the four years go up, at age twenty-two, the trio between Nate, Blair and Serena will break up into a duo and a solo, in the best way yet.

Dan left for school pronouncing his love of Vanessa as he left her behind in the distance. With him on the other cost pinning for his lost love, Vanessa is living it up in the city with some real friends becoming especially close to her TA, Hollis, Vanessa explores deeper into her art, and occasionally answers one of Dan’s many texts. These two artists finally learn the truth of their art, and put no distance between what they love, whether it be a poem, a shot, a lover, or themselves.

Cecily von Ziegesar started the series of eleven books, each taking us, though a month of our Upper East Siders lives from September to August. So instead of this book being the longest of the series being about their first month away it skips ahead to December, showing us their lives through anywhere from December twentieth to January third. Not just their first year away, but their second, third and fourth, with a brief gossip girl entry telling us what happened between where we left them off to now, the story picked right back off with the characters where ever they ended up in. Where at first it was weird and strange to write like this, von Ziegesar did it to give us a little more time with the characters we love. The reason you might be at this point of the ending of the series, and let me tell you it does not disappoint. Where there is no earthquake or fireworks, finally relationships are made where our trio makes the decision of whom gets Nate forever and always (and it is quite funny how things work out) Dan and Vanessa setting things out and boy crazy Jenny is off in university and living it up on the side. During the years, typically things happen, relationships get made and broken, showing us an older side of the young love between a blonde and a poet, and a big boobed freshman and a senior get sparked again. “Nate stared, slack-jawed, as the cab merged with the traffic and became impossible to spot. That was it”. With gossip girl never been fully explained, the whole story wraps up as a taxi cab pulls away, letting you shut the book knowing all is well on the Upper East Side.