Gossip Girl series(the books)

So, I've never had a book blog before, so forgive me if I don't do this right. For Christmas, I received the first three Gossip Girl books(Gossip Girl, You Know You Love Me, and All I Want is Everything) by Cecily von Ziegesar. I have finished the first two so far, and partway into the third.
In the first book(Gossip Girl), Serena van der Woodson returns from boarding school, after being gone for a year, with no explanation. She left New York in such a rush, she didn't even say goodbye to her then best friend, Blair Waldorf. No one knows why Serena is back, and Blair wasn't even aware that she was coming home. The book explores Serena's life back home(and her conflicts with Blair), Blair's relationship with her longtime boyfriend Nate Archibald, and the lives of "New York's Upper East Side's elite." We meet Dan Humphrey, a not-so-rich boy who is sercretly in love with Serena; Jenny Humphrey, Dan's younger sister, who adores Serena and looks up to her; Vanessa Abrams, Dan's friend(who has a major crush on Dan); Chuck Bass, an egotistical rich kid; and Kati and Isabel, Blair's "followers." In Gossip Girl's blog, they are all referred to by their first inital(to "protect the innocent" according to GG herself, although everyone knows who she is gossiping about anyways).
In the second book, Blair's boyfriend Nate meets Jenny(who introduces herself as Jennifer) and falls for her. Nate realizes that he isn't really into Blair anymore, and cheats on her with Jenny. When Blair finds them kissing at a party, she heads for the bathroom and cries, and Serena comforts her. This brings them close again, and they become best friends again.
Throughout these books, Ziegesar constantly drops the names of many high-end fashion designers as much as she can. This is very distracting from the plot, and gets kind of annoying after a few pages. But of course, I read on, hoping the rest of the book would be good. It wasn't.
The writing style didn't really draw me in, and the characters swear a lot, which is not how I would imagine classy, Upper East Siders would speak(like on the show). I definitely like the television show much better.

In the books, Blair is always described as the mean and cruel one, but we see no evidence of this at all. In my opinion, Serena is the mean character in this series. In You Know You Love Me(Gossip Girl #2), Blair's life falls apart. Being that she is my favorite character because I can relate to her, I felt horrible for her throughout the entire book.

Dan is a very intense, poetry writing boy in the books. I actually like him more than any of the guys(such as Chuck and Nate). Nate is a complete jerk, and Chuck...words cannot explain him. I like Dan's deep thoughts, and I like when he references other books and makes connections and such. He is honestly the smartest character in the whole plot.

I'm going to finish reading the third one, and I will probably borrow the rest of the series from the public library, because I want to see a) how they compare to the show and b) I want to see if Ziegesar's writing gets any better. I would recommend these books if you love to read about spoiled kids who make stupid decisions, love reading about fashion, and don't mind a lot of mindless swearing. They aren't completely horrible, but I'm glad they're shorter books.