Heaven to Betsy and Betsy in Spite of Herself by Maud Hart Lovelace

This is actually two of the Betsy-Tacy books in one volume, but they are similar enough that it's not worth doing two separate posts about them. Plus, I sped through them so fast it'll be hard for me to keep straight what came from each one!

I'm trying to remember if I ever read these books when I was younger. While the first four Betsy-Tacy books are burned into my memory, I don't really remember much from these. That may be because I was too young to really understand or appreciate what was going on in Betsy's high school years when I read these, or that I just never got around to them. These two books cover Betsy's freshman and sophomore years of high school, and there is definitely a huge jump in Betsy's maturity between Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown and Heaven to Betsy, although there's only two years in their age differences. But I think there is a huge difference between middle and high schoolers (generally) so I guess that is believable.

There is also a much wider cast of characters--while the first four books are basically just Betsy, Tacy, and Tib, Betsy and Tacy have a wide range of friends that they meet at their new high school and it evolves into "The Crowd" who they are always hanging out with. I was a little disappointed by this at first, because I didn't want this to be a sign of Betsy and Tacy becoming less close, but they remain just as close of friends, just with other friends around them. And some of the cast of characters are really lovable, especially Betsy's guy friends who are always over at her house like Cab, Herbert, and Tony. I feel like I was probably more like Tacy when it came to boys--much more shy and bashful around them, while Betsy's easy banter and desire to have boys in love with her was not part of my high school experience, so that was fun to read. I wished I'd had a Crowd like Betsy and Tacy, with friends always dropping in and lots of fun, easygoing outings together. It sounds so quaint, with everyone just having Good Clean Fun--going on car rides and playing a Ouija board and going ice skating, and the worst thing a boy can do is try to hold your hand. I wish it were still that way!

I loved the main lessons that Betsy learned along the way. She learned to stay true to herself and not try to be someone else, even if it helped her to get a boy, and she decided to be more serious about her writing after she realized she wasn't taking it seriously or caring enough about it. I loved how she realized that everyone had something for their own--something they wanted to be theirs, like her sister and her opera, and for Betsy, it was her writing. Betsy seems like such a normal teenager who makes really normal teenage mistakes, like letting her affairs of the heart get in the way of her long-term goals with her writing, and desperately trying to be Mysterious and Passionate with tons of perfume and a tinkling laugh. But she grows up. And I cannot wait until I can get my hands on the rest of them!