Fifteen was the first romance book I ever read...if you could call it romance. It is a sweet story about first love. I just remember reading it and imagining my first date someday.

Very cute and wholesome. I read The Luckiest Girl when I was younger, so perhaps nostalgia plays some factor in my assessment, but I enjoyed reading these teen coming-of-age stories from the 50s.

5 Stars for The Luckiest Girl
Gee. Gotta love YA Lit from the 50s!

Though I adored the story from the beginning, I didn't discern in my adolescence, when I first read The Luckiest Girl, how wise and poignant a story this truly is, not only for its portrayal of young romance and the road to maturity but for its lesson on mother/daughter relationships as well.

I also found that I'd misremembered Philip as some kind of macho guy, likely because my memory of the leaning boy on the book cover of the paperback I read left me with that impression of him, but he's a much more interesting character the way Cleary wrote him. Hartley is, well, Hartley--good ol' Hartley!--and Shelley's wonderful reflections on life and love at the end of the novel put honest-to-goodness tears in my no-longer-adolescent eyes. I even laughed more this time around!

5 Stars for Jean and Johnny
Ah! Young people listening to records and tuning in to their favorite television and radio "programs," drive-in restaurants with carhops serving Cokes, folks with telephone numbers like "Toyon 1-4343," and teenaged boys saying things like, "Gosh, that would be swell!" and meaning it.

Such fun to return to this old-fashioned, cozy, slightly heartbreaking, relatable, sweet story, since I understand it better this time and have a greater appreciation for Jean's gradual maturation through the novel. She grows in a much more satisfying way than I remembered. Plus, I don't know if I realized it years ago, but there's actually an Asian girl in this book, incorporated into the minor cast of students just like the rest of 'em, but with a clearly different name and a distinct look to her in one of the illustrations.

And, speaking of the illustrations--the darling illustrations! My reading time probably doubled just taking extra moments to study and enjoy all of the fitting and amusing details in the pictures. Wonderful!

4 Stars for Fifteen
Oh, it seems that, compared to Jean and Shelley, Jane here in Fifteen is flimsier, more internally whiny. And this may be the flattest, perhaps the most juvenile, of Cleary's YA romances. Could be because it's the first, or at least was the first published.

Still, I found the novel to be charming on the whole, and it got better as Jane finally began to "learn her lesson," as these young heroines of Cleary's inevitably must. Gee, such an experience rereading books like this as an adult!

Such a sweet collection of stories that will remind you of simpler times and warm your heart. Beverly Cleary has always been a favorite author of mine, and these three books are no exception. While the age demographic is a slight departure from her more well-known Ramona Quimby or Ralph S. Mouse books, the grounded relatability is not.

All three stories follow a teenage girl growing up and learning to navigate high school, love, and social situations. Truly just wholesome and lovely stories.

Beverly Cleary wrote the Ramona books, of course, and the Henry Huggins books, and a lot of other fantastic children's books, but who knew that she also wrote teen romances? I didn’t. And this collection totally hooked me in. The fifties nostalgia is captivating, even if you were a teenager long after that. Girls curled their hair with bobby pins and wore dresses to school, and on all their dates. Boys wore slacks and sweaters. Couples walked to the movies, and to the ice cream parlor. Remember when there was exactly one telephone in the house, and when it rang, you hoped it would be for you? Remember when kitchen counters were called drain boards, and refrigerators were still called “ice boxes?” Well, even if you don’t remember, you’ll be delighted by these novels, because teenage boy-girl relationships haven’t changed at all.