Betsy Was a Junior and Betsy and Joe by Maud Hart Lovelace

I blasted through these two books because I just couldn't wait to find out what is going to happen to Betsy. I think these books would be so much fun for a teenager or tween, although it started to get a little old for me to just read about all of the many parties that they were going to over and over. However, I loved loved loved the blossoming romance between Joe and Betsy. Lovelace does an excellent job of sustaining the reader's interest in Joe over the course of the four high school books--you can tell that he's the best boy for Betsy even though she doesn't know it for a while, and then all sorts of conflicts and love triangles arise to keep them from getting together too early. I also love how Betsy has real consequences for her actions in these books--not something that she struggles with and then is able to fix by the end all the time. In Betsy Was a Junior she creates a sorority with her friends and it really damages her relationships with some other friends and people, and makes it so that she isn't able to write in the Essay Contest. She isn't able to talk her way out of that one and she has to learn from her mistakes. I like how Betsy is always learning from her mistakes and becoming better, even though she does always fall back into some of the same mistakes of being too social and not studying hard enough. She is very real in that way, and I just love her.

I'm excited to read the last two!