The Book Of My Gossip Girl FanFic Dreams

From NetGalley

Gossip Girl meets The Sopranos in this fast-paced drama about a teenage mafia heiress who would do anything to avenge her family, even join forces with her handsome enemy.

Inside the tony suburb of Scarsdale is New York’s worst-kept secret: The mob runs everything, and the Nicastro family is at the center. Seventeen-year-old Tasha Nicastro lives a life of glitz and glamour, but she has no idea her family harbors a dark truth.

Tasha might look like your classic high school mean girl, but behind the designer clothes is a sharpshooter who knows how to bring anyone to their knees. The only person who has ever gotten under her skin is her former best friend, Leo Danesi, the youngest son of the Nicastro family’s rivals. After Leo returns to New York older and more handsome, Tasha thinks he’ll be the worst of her problems—until the life she thought she knew takes a violent, shocking turn. When her father and beloved older sister are murdered before her eyes, Tasha learns the dark truth: Her family runs the most powerful Mafia branch in New York, and now she’s set to inherit it all.

Tasha vows vengeance on the mysterious new mob behind the hit, but she can’t do it alone. She needs someone who already knows the underground world to help track them down. And that person is none other than Leo, the heir to his own family’s dangerous empire.

But Tasha is a Nicastro. She’s been raised in the company of killers, and there’s absolutely nothing she won’t do to avenge her family. That is, if the enemy doesn’t put her in gold chains first.

This is the kind of book I would've picked up in a bookstore at fifteen/sixteen. In The Company of Killers is the type of book that breeds voracious young readers, with scandal and betrayal and romance. in the same way that Gossip Girl and Private did for young millennials in the early aughts. Elora Cook has given new readers that same experience with her wonderful debut.

We dive head first into the decadent world of Tasha Nicastro, and her yearly end of summer party. But this year is different for two reasons. For one, it's the beginning of her senior year. For another, Leo Danesi, who she hasn't seen in years, gate crashed her perfectly planned soiree. From that moment on, chaos ensues. And every champagne-clouded conversation and adrenaline filled scene is more interesting and heart-pounding than the last.

The drama and tension between Tasha and Leo is magnetizing. We follow along desperately as tragedy strikes the Nicastro family and Leo becomes Tasha's only true ally. But blood runs thick in families like theirs and no matter how much they might want to, they can never truly shake those bloody binds.

Tasha and Leo not only navigate harsh realities, grief, and betrayal, but healing old wounds and learning whether they can trust each other. Or not. The closer we get to the end of the book they harder it becomes to see clearly where either will be standing when the bullets stop flying, for now.

Thank goodness, there's a book 2!

Elora Cook has done a wonderful job weaving teen drama, the twisted behaviors of the NYC upper crust, and the dark expectations of the mafia into one intriguing plot that will leave you dying for more. Yes, there is a cliffhanger, and it's devastating, but it's undeniable. It's exactly what was meant to be. But again...THERE IS A SEQUEL COMING!

If you love a good Romeo and Juliet comparison, mafia plots, rich people going through it, and early 2000s nostalgia, then you should pick up a copy of In The Company of Killers.