While I love dear Betsy, her self-centeredness grated on my nerves in the book. What joy to see her mature through the pages!

It's lovely seeing Betsy grow up--truly grow up. She has her moments of foolishness, as she has from the first day of high school, but a real young woman of substance starts to emerge in this book. One gets the sense that Betsy is surpassing even worldly Julia with her growth, and it's all handled with such elegance of writing that a person might almost believe that she is remembering her own adolescent years. Now, on to Betsy and Joe!

I don't know what it is about these books that just draws me in! Maybe it's the fact that Lovelace has created such a deep, yet relatable character in Betsy that I find myself remembering certain things from my high school experience even though mine and Betsy's were a century apart. Lovelace just brings out those timeless qualities of life. Betsy enters her junior year and continues setting goals for herself, learning from her mistakes and finding out who she is. For the first time, the end of this book had a bit of suspense so I'm excited to start on the next one!

Betsy was a little harder to like in this book. While it’s nice to have an imperfect heroine, her silliness and thoughtlessness were less enjoyable than her trying out a new personality in Betsy in Spite of Herself.

I would love for Mr. and Mrs. Ray to adopt me though. And I think Margaret is a pure delight.

I love this so much! Betsy has fast become one of my all-time favorite characters in literature, right up there with Anne of Green Gables.

Sweet

I wonder if such as thing as a low pompadour exists in the Betsy/Tacy world.

Not my favourite. Betsy is to frivolous in this book

I read this as the combined book with Betsy and Joe, and I thought I finish that half before the end of 2024, but I didn't. Logging Betsy was a Junior now for the sake of my reading log.

8/12: finally finished Betsy was a Junior. It was fine, but it's harder to get through the books as she gets older. There's still a lot of relatable moments though. I just miss the charm of when she was little. I'm taking a break to read something else, but I'll be back.

This was just a delightful, fictionalized, continuation of Maud Hart Lovelace’s experience growing up in Minnesota in the pre-WWI era. An omniscient narrator describes “Betsy’s” innocent, naive, humorous self-awareness as it develops in this continuation of the “Betsy-Tacy” series that I fell in love with as a young reader decades ago. I’m never too old for this kind of nostalgia!

October 2023:

But all of them were growing up, Betsy thought intensely. They would never be quite so silly again. The foolish crazy things they had done this year they would do less and less frequently until they didn’t do them at all.

“We’re growing up,” Betsy said aloud. She wasn’t even sure she liked it. But it happened, and then it was irrevocable. There was nothing you could do about it except to try to see that you grew up into the kind of human being you wanted to be.

I love these books. ❤️

January 2021:
Another book chock-full of wonderfully warm, funny, touching moments with Betsy Ray and her delightful family and friends. I just love this series. If you haven't read it, I really think you should, no matter how old you are. It's been a long time since I read anything that made me feel so good or made me love the characters like they're dear friends.

Good book. I like that the romance with Betsy and Joe is starting to warm up. Julia is now becoming an opera singer