The Gossip Girl books are insane: the difference between the books and the TV show

Before Gossip Girl hit the small screen on 19 September 2007, the Gossip Girl book series, written by Cecily von Ziegesar, hit shelves in April 2002. The books received a mixed reception, with teenage girls across the globe falling in love with the series—myself included.

I first picked up the series at the ripe age of thirteen. By this stage, the Gossip Girl TV show had aired a few seasons, so I had a vague understanding of the premise: rich kids in New York. But considering my family didn't believe in paying for the TV channels that actually aired Gossip Girl, and the fact that there was no way my mother would have allowed me to watch the show at twelve, I was unable to watch it. When I was strolling through my local library and spotted the cover of one of the Gossip Girl books, I couldn't believe my eyes. I had no idea that the series was originally a book series and quickly added the book to my check-out pile.

My family liked to do yearly Australian outback road trips with our ‘70s caravan, and to keep myself occupied during the long drives and days camped in the middle of nowhere with no electricity or phone reception, I would plough through books. I believe our retro caravan (it was from the ‘70s and the interior was yellow) was parked at Coopers Creek when I first pulled free the Gossip Girl book and allowed myself to read.

Within a few pages, I realised that I'd accidentally picked up the tenth book in the series, Would I Lie to You. Unperturbed, I continued to read the book anyway, desperate to have some form of entertainment in the midst of the scorching Australian outback with only my annoying little brother and a billion flies to keep me company.

I was hooked. The glitzy world of Gossip Girl took thirteen-year-old me by storm, and I immediately made it part of my personality. I related a lot to Blair’s character (minus the millions of dollars, of course), and she became my idol. I wanted to move to New York. I wanted to be just like them. Once I finished that book, I read it once more on the two-week road trip for good measure, and as soon as we were back home, I put a request in at my local library to borrow every single one of the Gossip Girl books they had. Of course, they all arrived out of order, so I continued to read the series in a completely random order. Book ten, then book one, then book four, then book eleven, until I finally read the entire series.

By the time I was fifteen, I had asked for the first season of Gossip Girl on boxset, and it quickly became my prized possession. I devoured the show and became even more obsessed with the lives of the New York elite. By the time I was sixteen and all six seasons of Gossip Girl had finished airing, I had watched the entire series multiple times over and read every single book.

Something I loved about watching the show was seeing the similarities to the book and then also seeing just how different they became. I thought I would share some of the differences between the books and the show for any show lovers who haven’t gotten around to reading the thirteen books.

I figured the easiest way to do this would be to go by character.

Blair Waldorf

• Blair has blue eyes in the books. As a brunette with blue eyes who convinced herself she must have been Blair Waldorf's twin after reading the books, I was very disappointed upon watching the show to see that Blair had brown eyes.

• Blair has strange taste in names. In the books, she has a cat called Kitty Minky. Her mother also gives birth to a baby girl in the series and asks Blair to name her—and she names her Yale. She literally names her baby sister YALE!

• Blair goes to Yale. Although initially waitlisted for her dream school, she does manage to get in and eventually goes there.

• Blair and Chuck don’t really date in the books. Throughout the book series, Blair’s main love interest is Nate. She loses her virginity to Nate and is constantly on-again, off-again with him. It’s not until the final book, I Will Always Love You, which follows the characters throughout college, that Blair and Chuck briefly date while running into each other studying abroad in London.

  
  

Serena van der Woodsen

• Serena is an heiress to a billion-dollar company. Her family runs a Dutch shipping empire. Her parents aren’t really mentioned much, and there is definitely no epic love plot involving Lily and Rufus.

• She becomes an A-list actress. Throughout the books, Serena’s angelic looks score her a few modelling opportunities, which eventually lead to acting. In the first book, she meets Vanessa when she auditions to be an actress in Vanessa’s short film. She then lands the lead role in a Breakfast at Tiffany’s remake.

• Serena is even more annoyingly effortless in the books. In the show, Serena has a knack for getting everything handed to her without really trying. This is so much worse in the series. Serena is stunningly beautiful in the books, her ethereal looks completely unmatched. Despite not really trying, she gets everything handed to her thanks to her natural charm and graciousness.

• The real reason Serena left and then came back from boarding school is really simple. Unlike the show, which ramped up the drama of having Serena run away to boarding school, Serena goes to boarding school over her guilt of sleeping with Nate, gets kicked out for missing too many classes, and then returns.

Jenny Humphrey

• Jenny is into art, not fashion. Jenny is an incredibly gifted artist throughout the series, with many of her plot points highlighting how artistic she is. When she dates Nate Archibald in book three, she is so obsessed with him that she paints a bunch of portraits of him.

• Jenny looks completely different in the books. The Jenny they cast in the show couldn’t be more different to the way Jenny is described in the books. Book Jenny is described as being short and petite with massive, I mean massive boobs (yes, they really drive this home in the series and constantly bring it up). She also has brown curly hair and freckles over her cheeks.

• Jenny idolises Serena, not Blair. In the TV show, we see Jenny absolutely idolise Blair and try to get in with her, but in the books, it’s actually Serena that she tries to emulate.

• Jenny goes to boarding school after book seven. After various scandals, including racy pictures of her spreading around Constance Billiard, Jenny goes to Waverley Academy Boarding School, where she had her own spin-off series, The It Girl.

Dan Humphrey

• Dan is an even bigger outsider in the books. Dan is described as being a lanky, chain-smoking poet with a dark and depressive view of the world. He’s portrayed as a very strange loner with no social skills.

• He and Vanessa date. In the books, Dan’s primary love interest is Vanessa. She’s obsessed with him for years before they get together, and they have an on-again, off-again relationship throughout the series.

• He dates many women. Dan does date Serena a couple of times, but his major love interests are Vanessa and a girl named Mystery Craze (a hardcore vegan who hosts poetry nights in her apartment) and Bree, a girl from the South. His and Serena's storyline is pretty much wrapped up by book 2 and they don't really interact after that.

• Dan gets published in The New Yorker. While Dan is often portrayed as a struggling writer in the TV show, in the books, he manages to get published in The New Yorker. His dream of being published comes true very early on in the series, and he finds that it’s not at all what he thought it would be. But that doesn't stop him from being extremely pretentious about it.

  
  

Chuck Bass

• Chuck is a secondary character in the books. He is a side character, often described as Nate’s weird friend. In the first book, he’s labelled the ‘evil rich kid,’ but not given nearly as much depth or presence as in the TV show.

• Chuck has a pet monkey called Sweetie. While TV Chuck adopts a pet dog in season five called Monkey, in the books, Chuck’s companion is an actual pet monkey, and he brings Sweetie almost everywhere.

• Chuck is bisexual. This is not really touched on in the show, except for one storyline where he briefly kisses a guy. But in the books, Chuck is actually bisexual and very much open to pursuing relationships with both men and women.

• Chuck is very creepy in the books. The TV show did its best to humanise Chuck and turn him into a redeemable character who is worthy of Blair Waldorf. But in the books, Chuck is pretty gross and doesn’t really evolve past being a ‘bad guy', until the final book where he goes to some kind of reform school and comes back as a completely changed man.

Nate Archibald

• Nate’s defining trait in the books is his stoner vibe. He spends the majority of the series smoking weed. While the TV show gives him more depth by turning him into a charming, conflicted character, book Nate is almost constantly high and very laid-back.

• Nate is Blair’s main love interest. He is torn between Blair and Serena, but he and Blair have a much stronger relationship than portrayed on TV. Their on-again, off-again status continues throughout most of the book series. When I was reading the books, I was always rooting for Nate and Blair and was so confused when the show paired Blair with Chuck.

• Nate skips college to sail around the world. When he yet again can't make up his mind between Blair and Serena, he skips out on going to Yale with Blair to instead sail around the world.

• Nate goes to rehab and dates Georgina Sparks. After being caught buying drugs in Central Park, Nate gets shipped off to a luxurious rehab for the elite where he meets the unhinged Georgina Sparks. The two of them fall fast and hard before Nate realises her can't handle her and they end things.

Vanessa Abrams

• Vanessa has a shaved head in the books. She is described as being completely bald and is often mistaken for a boy. She has a much edgier look compared to the TV show version.

• Vanessa is in love with Dan. She has been in love with Dan since childhood and is jealous of Serena when Dan becomes infatuated with her. The two of them date on-and-off in the books but they both consistently hurt each other every time they are together.

• Vanessa attends Constance Billiard. In the books, Vanessa actually attends the infamous school on a scholarship and although she loathes it, she wants to make the most of it to get into a good college.

• Vanessa and Blair are actually friends. Through a series of events, Blair ends up living with Vanessa in a Williamsburg apartment and although they are from completely different worlds, they actually become friends.

  
  

Other fun facts:

• Eric van der Woodsen is a completely different character. His name is actually spelled Erik and he's Serena's older brother. Blair almost loses her virginity to him in one of the books.

• Gossip Girl is never unveiled. No, Dan is not Gossip Girl in this universe and that would be weird. Although Dan's character is a writer and complete literary snob, he would never 'lower' himself to write gossip eblasts.

• Rufus and Lilly don't know each other. There is no epic Rufus and Lilly love story where the characters dated back in the day only to meet again in present day and still have that spark. In fact, I don't think these two characters even interact and Lilly goes exclusively by Lillian in the book and is still with Serena's father, David.

• Everyone smokes. Yep, thats right. All of the characters smoke in the book. Blair thinks it makes her look mysterious.

• The original author only wrote nine of the thirteen books. The rest of the books were written by a ghost-writer.

• There was a spin-off series called 'The Carlyles'. On May 6, 2008, Gossip Girl: The Carlyles was released. This series was not written by the original author, Cecily von Ziegesar. Only four books were released in this series and it feels incomplete, with many of the plot points from the fourth and final book, Love the One You're With, unfinished.

• The first book is the first episode. The first episode of the Gossip Girl tv show actually very closely follows the first book. Although it takes quite a few liberties with the backgrounds of certain characters, the gist is the same. Blair is planning her 'Kiss on the Lips' party and has Jenny do the calligraphy on the invitations.

• The XOXO was added for the show. In the books, Gossip Girl only signs off with 'you know you love me' leaving off the infamous XOXO.

I was absolutely obsessed with these books and couldn't get enough of them growing up. That obsession crossed over to the show and still lives on to this day. Gossip Girl will always have a special place in my heart with the show being a comfort watch that I like to re-visit every few years. Although the books and the show are very different, I think the allure of getting a peak into the lives on the beautiful and rich and the drama and gossip involved was highly appealing to me, and still is.

Would I recommend that you read the books now? Probably not. I don't think a lot of the content aged well and even as a former fan of the books, I don't think I would enjoy a re-read. But its fine to think back and compare the differences between the show and the books.

So, there you have it! A breakdown of some of the key differences between the Gossip Girl books and the show.

You know you love me. Xoxo, Gossip Girl.