i've been so excited to get to this one with joeeeeee!!
and it was worth the wait. yay opera cape! yay essay contest! yay mr. kerr! yay tib telling her boyfriend she'll dump him unless he gets better at football! (?!) YAY JOE!!

This was probably my favourite book in the series so far. It was filled with the right mix of emotion and character development, but had more plot elements and suspense than normal. Betsy and her friends are in their senior year of high school and realizing how grown up they are. Life gets a little more serious, but Betsy still finds ways to have fun. The setting was so clearly described that I now want to travel back in time and live in the first decade of the twentieth century :) The series could have ended with this book and I would have been happy!

The Greatest!

I love this series! As the 8th of the 10 Betsy-Tacy books, this book covered Betsy's senior year in 1910 Minnesota. Absolutely delightful and takes me back to my childhood when my sister and I loved these books.

This is probably the best of the highschool books ... because of Joe! He is one of the best heroes ever, and Betsy and him together ... wow! It's just so cute!

Of course, Tony ... well, he's really sweet, too. It's kinda sad that there had to be that whole love triangle thing. I mean, there was never really any competition, but ... still. Sad. Especially how Tony ended up. *sighs*

The best part was at the farm when Betsy and Joe meet up (just like in their freshman year!) and have such a good time together. It's just so adorable!

~Kellyn Roth, Reveries Reviews

I read this, and all of the Betsy Tacy series, about once a year, they are wonderful.

This is number 8 in the series of Betsy-Tacy books for children written by my favorite author Maud Hart Lovelace.

I think these coming of age books - although set in 1910 - 1918 - are as relevant today to young people as ever. Beautiful, heart-warming stories based on the author's life and friends. I read them first in high school and am rediscovering them now. Joe is based on Maud's real - life huband, Delos Lovelace, whom she met in her twenties, but in these stories they went to high school together.

OTP OTP OTP all the feels gah

REREAD JUNE 2023: UGHHH the Betsy books are comfort books like no other

Betsy finally gets Joe!
During her final year of high school, Betsy does a lot of soul-searching and feels nostalgia for what she's about to leave behind. But the Great World awaits and Joe wants to share it with her.
Betsy comes about as close as she has ever gotten to being depressed in this book. She actually volunteers to go away for a while to the farm of some family friends to get her head together and relax, so that she can go back to school refreshed and with a new outlook. She suffers over her problems with two beaux and guilt over misleading Tony. Has she accidentally ruined his life? Major teenage angst!
I like the full-circle feel of the four high school books. In the beginning of Heaven to Betsy, she meets Joe Willard and instantly feels a connection, but falls into a major crush on Tony Markham. During the four years, she gradually gets over Tony, while still loving and worrying over him, but she cannot seem to make any headway with Joe. At the end of the final book, Betsy feels she was a failure in her relationships with both Tony and Joe. In a beautiful sense of Deja Vu, Betsy runs into Joe at Butternut Center, where she first met him. This time the magic happens. Lovely happy ending to the high school years.

"There was nothing like a picnic! she reflected. If you were happy, it made you happier. If you were unhappy, it blew your troubles away."

Finally, what we have all been waiting for, Betsy and Joe together at last (although having read these books 40 years ago, I know it is not all clear sailing!) I like Tony and Cab, and I worry about them, too, though! One caveat, I never considered Merchant of Venice a comedy, but a quick review on Wikipedia tells me that it was originally classified as one of his comedies. Do tell!