Campus Fever and Roommates share several titles. “Making the Grade” is CF #1 and RM #11. “All-Nighter” is CF #2 and RM #1. Fairly accurate titles in all cases. “Crash Course” is CF #3 and RM #2. It’s very appropriate for RM #2, since the main character’s world is coming apart. For CF #3, though, it just seems random.

“Class Act” is CF #7 and RM #10. The POV character in CF #7 is from a well-to-do family, but most of the story is about her acting not-classy. In RM #10, it’s more subtle: the POV character is trying to get the freshman class to perform an act of charity. And RM #14 is called “Campus Fever”, which is perfectly accurate: the POV character is sick and in the infirmary for a lot of it.

Now for the unique titles. Campus Fever #4 is Illegal Notion. Good call, since a side character is allegedly doing something illegal. #5 is Time Out. Again, good, since it’s interterm, and the POV character has to reevaluate her life. #6 is Fast Lane, and #8 is Wild Moves: both random.

RM #3 is Major Changes, and there will be major changes in the POV character’s life by the end. #4 is Extra Credit, and the first half takes place during spring break. #5 is Multiple Choice. That works two ways. First, the POV character has too many distractions taking her mind off schoolwork, but later she makes one very, very bad decision that I have a hard time calling a “choice”; IMO, it shouldn’t have occurred to her. #6 is Final Exams: it’s the end of the semester. #7 is School’s Out! which it is. #8 is Teacher’s Pet, and although the “teacher” is actually a grad student, I’d call it accurate. #9 is Higher Education: the former freshmen are now sophomores, and two of them are about to have some unpleasant learning experiences. #12 is No Contest; I’m not even sure what that’s supposed to mean in context. #13 is Model Student, and one character has a modeling job, while another is trying to present herself as the ideal coed. #15 is Study Break: summer again. #16 is Test of Friendship, and that’s exactly what’s happening. #17 is Back to School: duh. #18 is Social Studies: one character suddenly has a more involved social life than she can handle. #19: Love by the Book: there is a major romantic plot point. #20: Major Attraction: one of the regulars has just that, for a new character.

I don’t even know what to say about the FD titles, though. Only two or three of them are truly appropriate to the story; most seem to have been chosen by a bot. Freshman Wedding, Freshman Promises and Freshman Celebrity are the only ones that really tie into the stories.

B. Some storylines take a leap forward, and some new POVs are brought it, but it’s overbalanced: almost everything involves KC to some extent.

KC: She’s at a crafts fair selling the calendar (already on its second printing). She’s smitten with Warren Manning: Mr. December, Clark Gable. Or rather, his photo, since she hasn’t met him yet. Peter Dvorsky, the photographer, shows up to check on sales. He’s a bit abrasive: all he has to say about Courtney’s stunning photo is “Blondes are hard to light,” and that some people are going to draw a mustache on KC’s photo. After he leaves, Warren the Wonderful arrives and asks for KC’s number. Fangirl shrieks from KC, Winnie and Faith! 

KC has tea with Courtney in the Tri Beta house. KC wants to be a Tri Beta so bad she can taste it. (I wonder if she politely turned down the other two sororities that made offers, or just blanked them.) Courtney invites her to join spring rush, and also mentions the Winter Formal Court; she thinks KC has a good chance to be Freshman Princess. Which means KC needs a date. Funny how she feels compelled to mention Peter Dvorsky when she and Courtney are discussing the calendar. 

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I should break here to report on those new POVs. 
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Marielle: Courtney has a few words with her about the hazing article. She had believed Marielle (and Mark) when they’d told her the article “cruelly and falsely” maligned ODT, but now that it’s been fact-checked and published, she has to believe it. Courtney is opposed to hazing, and never would have expelled Lauren if she’d known the charges were true. (Maybe should have checked things out before pulling the trigger?) She also defends Lauren on the grounds of being “bright…talented writer and journalist…lovely person.” Courtney further warns Marielle that if she interferes with KC’s pledging, Marielle will be on her way out.

So Marielle will have to take her anti-KC campaign underground. A few days later, she’s with Mark, looking at skis; she drags him out of the store and starts having a meltdown. She’s had it with taking orders from Courtney, and she’d rather die than see KC pledge Tri Beta. According to her, KC and Lauren, between them, are a scourge on Greek life. It’s Lauren’s fault Mark was disciplined for the hazing incident and has to do community service; KC probably helped her get the hazing story, and definitely is the one who dropped a dime on Hammond and broke him up with Faith. And of course, the coffee-flinging incident in September. All true, but perhaps Mark, Marielle and Hammond should stop doing crummy things? And KC is turning Courtney against Marielle, or so Marielle thinks. Sorry, babe, it’s your nastiness that turns people against you. Mark agrees to do something to bring KC down, and it will happen the night of Winter Formal.

Dash: He’s at the Journal’s Xmas party, talking to a girl who he should be interested in…but he can’t get his mind off Lauren. He can’t believe he was betrayed; he should have known better, right? He leaves just as Lauren is coming in. He makes a snarky comment about Tri Beta, and Lauren tells him she’s no longer in the sorority, and no longer on her parents’ dime. She also tells him what really happened with Hammond, but Dash needs time to process that.

Back to KC: Later, she’s cranky, coming down with a cold, and brooding about not having a date for Winter Formal, especially not with Warren Manning, who should have called by now. To burn off some nervous energy, she goes to the snack bar. “Nobody important ever hung out there,” so of course Peter is there. After some verbal sparring and shoulder-to-shoulder contact, he offers to be her date. Even though she looks crummy, because, wow, he thinks there are more important things than looking perfect. KC’s in a better mood now, and thinks Peter is “certainly better than nothing,” so she accepts. 

Later she gets a C in Western Civ, which puts her in a crummy mood again. She’s about to call on Peter, who she knows won’t mind that she looks bad and her grades are bad. He’s so…comfortable. But Warren Manning is waiting outside her dorm. He’s called twice, which he states that never does, and he’s come looking for her, which he also never does. But he wants a stunner on his arm at Winter Formal, because he also wants to be in the court. Oh, she has a date? Break it!

But KC puts off breaking the date with Peter. Matthew Kallender comments on her and Peter being a couple: “The talented photographer and his beautiful model.” “How about the smart model and her talented photographer?” She gets just over $200 from the sale of the calendars, which is what she needs to get dolled up for the formal. She’s definitely going with Warren, and when she delivers Peter’s share of the profits, she breaks the date, claiming illness. He appears to take it in stride: “Sure, I’m excited about going. But I get excited…about taking pictures of tomatoes…Just because you’re gorgeous doesn’t mean that I think that going to a dance with you has to be the high point of my life.” KC is stung, and snaps back that she’s going, all right — with someone else. Which makes her “fickle, inconsiderate, and dumb.” 

Later, she’s with Winnie and Josh while they’re clowning around in a western-wear shop. She gets increasingly fed up: Winnie slacks off and gets A’s, she busts her ass and gets C’s, and Winnie is so happy with Josh, while KC has a date with a handsome upperclassman and is not happy about it at all. She makes a snide remark, Winnie makes a snide remark about her breaking the date with Peter. and KC counters that that’s no worse than Winnie letting Josh think that Travis has left town. Record-scratching noise: Josh overheard that. He walks out, and Winnie follows, after telling KC she’ll never forgive her. 

At Winter Formal, KC is having a miserable time. Cold medicine is making her loopy, Warren is only interested in her as an accessory, and she feels terrible about Peter and about Winnie. Meanwhile, Marielle looks for a way to humiliate KC, and decides to arrange an accident at a construction site. “KC helped drag [Mark] through the mud. Now it’s time to return the favor.”

KC is fantasizing about Peter swooping in and declaring himself (yeah right) when Marielle cuts in, claiming that Courtney wants to talk to her privately. Except Marielle can’t find the construction site, and while she’s looking for it, Winnie charges up. Pool push! Except it’s not played for laughs; Winnie regrets it immediately, and it doesn’t come off like KC deserved it. And this works very much to Marielle’s advantage: “It’s about time you found out who your real friends are.” She lends KC her own gown, slicks her hair back, and fixes her makeup. Exotic, and what an impression to drastically change her appearance halfway through the dance! 

Of course KC wins Freshman Princess: all part of Marielle’s plan to set KC up for a fall from a greater height. In fact, the next day, she brings a get-well basket, and hangs out in KC’s room acting motherly. Later, she calls on Peter again — “I heard you won goddess of the harvest, or whatever they call it” — and apologizes. He halfway accepts. Stay tuned…

I should mention that Peter has a motorcycle (!) and his room is wall-to-wall with photos he took. He’s very intense, and not trying to impress KC, which of course is why she’s impressed. 

Lauren: Her calling card (remember those?) has been cancelled, along with all her credit cards. Well, at least without the calling card, she won’t be tempted to grovel to Mommy Dearest. Of course, she has no clue how to handle money. And Winnie gives her the terrible news that the guy who hit her was also uninsured. Well, Lauren knows that “if she wimped out now, it was all over for her.” 

So she has to get a job. (She did get $7000 for what was left of the car.) Gee, no skills, no experience: good luck finding a job. Well, she has some unspecified volunteer work, to make up a very thin resume. So she’ll be a maid at the Springfield Mountain Inn. It looks as if meals are included, which is a perk she’ll come to appreciate, believe me. But…cleaning toilets, while wearing a uniform with a cap? Yikes! It’s to her credit, though, that she doesn’t slack off and doesn’t cop an attitude about this being beneath her. (She does balk at wearing the cap, but she has to if she wants to keep the job, so on it goes.)

She has to work at the hotel the night the Winter Formal is happening there. She’s never had a date to a dance. (Seriously? Not even a blind date? Private schools like the one she went to usually have dances with their brother schools, because part of their purpose is to marry the girls off.) Anyway, she’d had a flicker of hope that this time would be different, but of course it’s not. Seeing Dash stroll through the lobby (not on a date) doesn’t help. He’s there to take photos for the Journal, and when he sees KC, he asks about Lauren. She’d told him she was working at the Inn, and he hopes to run into her. :::melt:::

Also, Lauren is a bystander while Marielle transforms KC, and endures a zinger (“I didn’t go through all this work to have you sit back here and watch Lauren fold sheets.”). There’s something very real about this scene; I can see it in a TV show. At the end of her shift, almost the end of the dance, she encounters Dash, also leaving. They walk in almost-silence, and then zing! Dash grabs her, they kiss, all is forgiven and forgotten, and they run into the ballroom for the last dance. (Her in her maid’s uniform, him in jeans and a leather jacket. How nineties.) 

Winnie: Travis has not yet left town, and KC is nagging her about this: tell Josh before he finds out in a bad way! Meanwhile, she partied all night with Josh, then they went up to the mountains and watched the sun rise. Wonder if they did anything else? 😉 For Winter Formal, they plan to dress unconventionally, then meet at the hotel. They also exchange the Big L. 

Winnie is applying herself more to schoolwork. She pulled an all-nighter to write her Intro to Film semester paper, and got an A. She stays in Josh’s room to study, and actually does.

Now she’s going to the Beanery to tell Travis it’s over between them. (Wasn’t that settled in the last installment?) KC gets bent out of shape and accuses Winnie of stringing along both guys. At the Beanery, Winnie pleads with Travis to move on when his gig here is finished. For his career. Is there someone else? Uh…no. Is she only concerned about his career? Uh…yes. 

So the night of the Formal, she’s waiting by the hotel pool, where she and Josh were supposed to meet. She’s not dressed up, just blinking back tears and hoping against hope he’ll show up. He does, but he’s with Travis. They’d spent most of the previous night talking and drinking and talking, and now they’re going to let her make the decision. Which she can’t. She’s favoring Josh, but she cares just enough about Travis that she can’t turn him down to his face. “Either choose or we both walk.” “I can’t…it doesn’t work like that.” So both guys turn and leave. 

Afterwards, Winnie wanders around distraught (which will soon become a pattern), stopping to cry on Lauren’s shoulder a bit (seriously? Not like she’s working or anything) before she sees KC by the pool. Next day, Josh is neutral, which Winnie takes as a bad sign. Travis doesn’t even say goodbye. KC won’t talk to her either. Winnie is starting to hate herself. 

Melissa: She also has a cold, and Winnie tells her she can’t tough it out and go to class and practice, because she’ll get sicker. Especially in sleety cold weather. Brooks shows up with soup, OJ, vitamins, the whole nine. Winnie says goodbye and they don’t notice from inside their cloud of hearts. Aw! Interesting that Josh + Winnie works because they’re opposites, while Melissa + Brooks works because they’re similar. 

A few days later, she’s not quite over her cold, but wants to go to the gym anyway. Brooks won’t let her; she doesn’t appreciate being ordered around; he counters that he’s concerned, not bossy; she goes to the gym after all. 

Days later, while everyone else is at the dance, Melissa and Brooks are in the weight room. Brooks would rather be anywhere Melissa is. They’re coming to terms: Melissa is defensive, but she can change; Brooks is overprotective, but he can change. 

Faith: She basically has a cameo in this. Her Alice performances are coming up. Her independent study grade rides on them, as well as her theater-dept. reputation going forward. Apparently it all goes well, which is why it barely rates a mention. 

Also, she’s not going to referee between Winnie and KC. Except, after a few days of neutrality, that’s what she starts doing, by suggesting that KC, Winnie and Josh all go downtown together, to get what they need for the formal. And we know how that ends. After the dance, she says, deliberately in Melissa’s hearing, that her life has gotten better since she’s become single. 

Tidbits: KC is selling the calendars at a post-Christmas craft fair, where an “old, dried-up Christmas tree” is for sale. Except, how can Christmas have already happened? We’re told that a black guy is student body president, and he posed for the calendar as Sidney Poitier. While KC is having tea with Courtney, she turns down the offer of cake, wanting to appear disciplined. Honestly, why worry so much about image? Being so uptight can make a bad impression. (Remember this later!) 

Speaking of image, Warren is so obsessed with his own image (tanning salon in the middle of winter, wanting KC to stand on his “best side”), that I wonder if he’s into girls at all except as co-stars. He wants to be an model/actor, but his parents insisted he get a degree.

Lauren’s cancelled credit cards include AmEx, Saks, Visa Gold and MasterCard. After calling those companies, she decides to “save her change” instead of calling the others. Except, it should be an 800 number to call a CC company. And jeez, she has more than four cards?! At age 18?!

Funny: Marielle, to Mark: “Courtney wants KC in the Tri Betas so badly she’d give up her Lady Clairol for it.” Also funny is Marielle trying to storm away from Mark, but her tight skirt and super-high heels making it impossible to do more than hobble. Josh has designed a video game that has corn dogs fighting Twinkies. “And for this you need a college education?” Winnie asks. 

B+. A bit heavy-handed with the Don’t Judge By Appearances message, and one bit is somewhat implausible, but it’s entertaining. Certainly better than the first book in this series. And this is the first of several titles shared by CF and RM.

So, Amy Trevlyn (Cathy’s punk friend from the first book) is brooding in her room. She’s not overjoyed to be in Boston, but it’s better than Seattle. How things change! Reflecting on her backstory: two years earlier, she’d come home from London, where she’d been living with Binny Airplane (I’d love to know what it says on his birthcert), to L.A., where her parents were fighting constantly until mom took off. Amy caught up with her in Reno; apparently she’d contracted hepatitis the moment the divorce was final. Mom died and Amy went to Seattle with Grandma, mom’s mom. Dad sends money when she asks for it, but not enough to get back to London. And she has to go to college or he’ll cut her off financially. Again I say, a true punk would say “Fine, I don’t need your money,” and made her own way, in Seattle, SF or wherever. Now she’s waiting for Binny and his band, the Mindbenders, to come to Boston for the start of their U.S. tour. (She’d been writing to Binny during her senior year, but the correspondence must have fallen off at some point, as we’ll see.) She’ll leave with him, or so she plans. 

Meanwhile, school is boring and oppressive, except for sociology, taught by Norman Birnbaum, another liberal. Amy’s roommate is Leslie Schaeffer: shy, nerdy, badly dressed, wants to be a writer. In book 1, Amy dismissed Leslie as “bottom of the barrel”; now she tolerates her, although she’s irritated by the way Leslie is always checking in and out. I get the impression she just wants to remind people that she exists. 

Amy feels restless, goes looking for Cathy, finds her in Nan and Louisa’s room. Amy looks outward more (Cathy, in the first book, kind of had tunnel vision), so we get an overview of Rachel Pirnie “looking like the Queen of Sheba drinking sangria”; Susan McMahon, who is said to resemble Brooke Shields; Adelle Maris, who seems to be Susan’s BFF; super-perky Betty Berke; Louisa (her name is Fenquist, but it still hasn’t been stated), “portly, almost matronly”;  and Nan Deluca, pothead. To go into more detail, Betty is a trip: wears ponytails with ribbons and has a menagerie of stuffed animals. But Amy has some respect for Betty’s having her schtick just like Amy has hers. Very mature attitude! We’ll soon see how put-upon Louisa is, particularly but not exclusively by Nan. And Amy really doesn’t like Nan; she’s out for herself only, not trustworthy. Anyway, Amy is not into all the gossip, and is becoming fed up with Hastings and its student body, especially the boring guys the other girls gush about. How could anyone date these “little boys”, amirite? 

Next afternoon, sociology class. We meet Margot Williams, token black girl, who is an activist without being an overbearing SJW. And we also meet Craig Baldwin, wholesome, conservative, all-American looking…so of course Amy despises him. Prof. Birnbaum starts a discussion on individuals, freedom and society. Naturally, Amy and Craig are on opposite sides, and neither will back down until Nan pipes up…to agree with Craig’s anti-drug stance. Which makes Amy’s head explode.

Nan and Craig are sharing dinner in the cafeteria, which really irritates Amy; really really. After Amy spews about this, at length, to Leslie and Cathy, Leslie observes that this happens a lot in the bodice-rippers she reads: opposites attracting, and jealousy masquerading as disgust. 

Amy finally gets a chance to vent when Louisa shows up in her and Leslie’s room. Nan booted her out because Craig was coming over. Now, that is pretty outrageous: first of all, it’s a suite, so Louisa doesn’t have to leave for them to have privacy, and second, Nan is such an emotional vampire, she owes Louisa some consideration, not the other way around. So Amy storms into their suite, where Nan and Craig are half-dressed and fully stoned; she goes off on Nan, who yells back, and Craig basically disappears. 

And yes, there will be fallout from this. Gossip gossip gossip, which doesn’t bother Amy, but it sure bothers her when she gets called into the dean’s office. Dean Stewart this time, a white-haired conservative from the Greatest Generation, or perhaps earlier. Amy is no stranger to being called into offices, so she’s not intimidated, but I agree with her that it’s a bit fascist that he’s basically putting her on probation because (of) a) Nan made a complaint against her, b) how she looks, and c) her stance in soc. class that rules are made to be broken. Oh, he wouldn’t admit it was Nan who made the complaint, but someone saw her coming out of his office. 

Well, Amy’s ready to take off as soon as Binny gets to the city, but in the meantime, she’s going to get back at Nan by derailing Craig + Nan. They’re going to meet seven pm Saturday at the Phi Beta party, so Amy plans to make sure he’ll get there…but just a few minutes late. Margot has a bunch of Greenpeace posters to put up around campus; Amy volunteers to help, and times it so Craig will fulfill her request to put one up in the boys’ locker room. He’s surprisingly willing to accompany her while she posts all the others, which leads to lunch off campus, and a movie. There’s a mutual apology for what happened a few nights ago, and from there, they’re having a standard getting-to-know-you day. What’s also noteworthy is that when a security guard challenges them, Amy is about to give him both barrels, but Craig placates him with humor. They head for the party in tandem, and Nan being pissed off is the best part of Amy’s day. Or is it the best? She actually had something resembling a good time with Craig, and he certainly enjoyed her company. 

Craig doesn’t drop Nan, exactly, but as time goes on, he spends more time with Amy, and it gets to the point where people are asking if she and Binny are over. Which makes her chew glass, of course, but she’s getting awfully cozy with a guy she claims not to like. She feels very much at ease with Craig, but draws the line at hanging out in his room. It’s not stated, but the impression is that if she was fully alone with him, that would lead to being unfaithful to Binny.

Then we get Craig’s POV. He’s torn between Nan and Amy, but tilting towards Amy: Nan is so possessive, and he can tell Amy is hurting inside. He talks to Lance about doing a story on the Mindbenders, which is the first he hears about their lead singer being Amy’s SO. Which kind of staggers him…but doesn’t make him any less interested. 

Amy is panting with anticipation. She doesn’t plan to stay at Hastings after she sees Binny. This will be the end of her anxiety attacks (!) and might even get her father to notice her. Most of the other Windsorites are temporarily punking out for the show. Cathy wears pegged jeans and a red off-the-shoulder (“Flashdance”) sweater; she’s not sure it’s enough, to which I say, she could wear that to a youth group. Margot is wearing her usual tailored clothing; again, Amy admires her for not being a poser. 

I forgot to mention, the place the Mindbenders are making their U.S. debut (ha) is called The Pit. The layout sounds about right for a punk club. Not much fanfare before the Mindbenders come out on stage. I picture Binny as looking like the lead singer of Human League; the descriptions seem right for 1985 New Wave. Their act is tight, everyone is dancing their ass off, and Amy is losing her mind. Binny! Finally, her punk true love! But she’ll have to wait until intermission to go backstage. 

Now, when I first read this, I was positive that Amy would get to the dressing room and find Binny’s new girlfriend, maybe wife. Fortunately (in the short run), that’s not what happens. He’s plenty happy to see her; the only sour note is when he wonders why they couldn’t see each other before the show. Well, because she didn’t know where he was staying…and Binny winces to hear her saying something so mundane. OMG, has she become, er, middle-class? Shudder! Anyway, after ten minutes, she’s back on the dance floor, the Mindbenders are back on stage, and it takes no time at all for Binny to notice that there’s some kind of connection between Amy and Craig. And Amy has been noticing Craig too: he dances like nobody’s watching, a torn t-shirt looks natural on him, and…uh…what’s going on here? 

After the show, party! Amy turns down several offers of a ride back to campus, of course including one from Craig. Margot decides Amy needs some kind of support, so she goes along. And a good thing she does, because when they get there, it’s no party, just people lying around in a stupor. No food, no conversation, and a very grim atmosphere. And Binny disappeared somewhere. While looking for him, Amy opens a door and startles a guy doing something with a candle and “small, clear envelopes”. He freaks, Binny comes running, and after he reassures the guy, he pushes Amy up against the wall. “You KNOCK before you barge into a room, you understand?!” 

So Amy and Margot are outta there, or so they think. Before they can even find a bus stop, Binny comes along in a van with the other band members. They want to go back to campus, but the van heads for another location. Nothing exactly terrible happens, just that Binny is acting erratically — a “paranoid Napoleon” — and won’t let Amy and Margot leave. Plus, he’s clearly on something, and so are some of the people in his crew. Poor Amy: until last night, she wanted to be with Binny forever, but “stay forever and never leave my side” are often the terms set by a psycho. 

Back on campus, Amy and Margot’s absence is noted. Nan vows to get back at Amy for interfering with her re: Craig. Funny how Nan is presented as evil for thinking this way, yet Amy is perfectly justified in using Craig to get back at Nan. And she gets her chance: Margot has called Windsor, giving Leslie the address of where they’re staying, and while Leslie is trying to find someone with a car, Nan yoinks the address from her. D’oh! 

Also, Craig is in the gym, having his second run-in with the football coach, who doesn’t like any guys other than the football team to use the Nautilus equipment. It’s a good scene, actually: Craig doesn’t back down, but presents a calm and reasonable case. “Furthermore, I take phys. ed., and anyone who takes phys. ed. has a right—“ And when the coach won’t let him finish, he takes it to the dean. Of all the love interests in this series, he’s the one I like best. Certainly the one with the most integrity. 

And what great timing, because Nan is just coming out of the dean’s office, having ratted Amy out for being off campus doing scary drugs. (I’m not sure how being away from campus is an infraction, since it’s not a private college, and the admins would not act in loco parentis. I also don’t understand why a college dean would try to get a student arrested. They usually try to avoid getting the law involved, to save the school’s reputation.) 

At any rate, Margot and Amy escaped out the bathroom window just before the lights and sirens. But they’re still miles from campus. And Amy is shattered. Binny was her only hope, and now he’s lost to her; she can’t go back to school; she’s got nowhere to go. It’s pretty cinematic too, with her torn fishnet tights and smeared makeup illustrating how her tough-girl facade has fallen apart. 

But of course, Craig comes riding to the rescue, in a borrowed car. He promises to help smooth things over with the dean, which he does, along with Prof. Birnbaum (it’s been said before that he is sometimes a go-between for students facing the administration). Once again, no penalty for our heroines, although we don’t get to see the scene play out. Also, Leslie is beating herself up so bad for letting Nan have the address, Amy can’t be angry with her. She does swear revenge on Nan, but simmers down later and agrees to let Nan’s karma catch up with her. Which it will. 

So all that’s left is for Amy and Craig to have a Genuine Date. A movie, pizza, and Amy with her hair down, made up like a coed, and wearing jeans, a turtleneck, and a down coat. And she tells Craig her story that she’s never told to anyone. And at the end of the evening, smoochies. No, she doesn’t change permanently, but she’s a lot less tense and combative. Love will do that to ya!  

There’s also a subplot with Cynthia Woyzek. She’s on scholarship and works in the cafeteria, scowling at everyone, and Amy doesn’t have time for her and the  “chip on her shoulder the size of a redwood”. The Sunday before the Mindbenders show, Agatha (Cynthia’s roommate, the Texas deb) wants to talk to Amy about Cynthia: would it be okay for her to attend the Mindbenders show? She feels so left out and all. Which Amy can’t fathom: what’s so terrible about being left out at this dump, and since when does anyone need an invitation to go to a bar? Thing is, I think I wouldn’t go out of my way to attend this show, because there’s no mention of tickets, a guest list, or even a cover charge. So the Mindbenders are a bar band, essentially. I probably wouldn’t have hauled ass across the city on a school night just for a bar band. OTOH, if it’s what everyone is doing…I had a similar experience my freshman year of college, when it seemed that everyone (and in such a small school, it might really have been everyone), was going off campus to see Dangerous Liaisons, and not one person asked if I wanted to come along. Grr… Anyway, the morning after the show, everyone’s talking about how awesome it was. Cynthia overhears this, snarls a sour-grapes comment, and almost cries when she’s alone. In talking it over with Agatha, she thinks lack of money is what’s keeping her from being social, while Agatha tells her her attitude is the real barrier. It’s hard to unravel, and that’s why the next book focuses on Cynthia. 

There’s also a foreshadowing. Terry Smith, super jock, was mentioned in the last book, and now we meet her roommate, Mary Anne Duffy, who is devoted to her SO, Bill Rivers, at Boston University. She and Bill are spiritually linked, she can’t stand it sometimes how in love they are…When Terry asks point-blank about birth control, Mary Anne is gobsmacked. Birth control? But she’s Catholic! The rhythm method is foolproof, right?…Right? _______________________

Constant references to Amy’s Mohawk (but it has to be a faux-hawk. Or the author didn’t know from New Wave hairstyles) and what color she’s spray-dyed it. She gets off on staring back at people staring at her. She wears a shirt that says “Kill ‘Em All, Let God Sort ‘Em Out.” (I have always wondered, all who?) Craig wears his old high school warmup jacket.

We meet Lance Tuchman, editor of the school paper. We get a glimpse of Kim Joffrey, who has the only single on their floor, and is practically a ghost girl, and Jacqui Orsini, music major, violinist, but not entirely devoted to her music.

Amy wonders if Cathy sees anything in John Wickland besides his looks. Yanno, I think that may be all there is to it.

Agatha attends a Baptist church, but only because the denomination she really belongs to is “so rare and Southern” that it’s not represented in Boston, so Baptist is as close as she can get. I generally like Agatha, but she’s a real pig when she shrieks at the sight of one of those Greenpeace posters and calls it “propaganda…practically subversive.” (Young Republican propaganda is okay in her book, because they’re “an established organization.”)

Amy and Rachel don’t seem to be friends: after the confrontation with Nan, Rachel asks what happened, but in a way that’s almost mocking Amy. “And you took care of it, I gather?” Later, Amy mentally dismisses everyone in Windsor, including “Miss Rachel Gucci and her airs.” Although I wonder if that was supposed to be Adelle, who earlier she’d also thought of as Miss Gucci (Susan McMahon being Miss Cover Girl). 

Grade: A. Winnie is finally a sympathetic character instead of irritating, KC is less nasty, and Lauren has reached a turning point. Faith is not seen much; her story will be interesting further on. And Melissa is getting into the mix!

This is the Thanksgiving episode (although we’re only told about the day itself in flashback). KC’s parents are hosting dinner at the Windchime. Faith and Winnie’s presence is a given. Lauren is invited, if she’s able to go. Brooks will be with his own family. Melissa’s parents live in Springfield, and she gets very uncomfortable when Faith tells her she’s welcome in Jacksonville.

Winnie: Flashback to meeting Josh in Paris. Unlike Vincent Vega, she did go into Burger King, and according to her, some of the sandwiches were on baguettes. She was homesick, he was having culture shock, and they bonded. Now she’s meeting him at the bus station. He’s a classic grunge guitarist (blond, no comparison to Cobain, but the reader can fill that in if they choose). They kiss and the world falls away, yadda yadda. They wander around downtown Springfield in a romantic daze, but Winnie can’t forget she has a study session at 8pm. Travis lives in the moment and spends what he has on him, like he did in Europe. Winnie has settled down a bit since then. 

Travis may be around for a while, if he can find a gig. Winnie is trying to decide if she wants him to stay, or if she wants to pursue Josh. And does Josh want to be pursued? He’s not hostile, but he’s keeping Winnie at arm’s length, and it’s clear that unlike Tumbleweed Travis, Josh is focused and organized. Which may be what Winnie wants and needs. After the study session, she can’t sleep, so she knocks on Josh’s door, waking him up, and apologizes for standing him up (she refers to Travis as “…an old friend…”). Josh is largely unreceptive, but does squeeze her hand before closing the door.

The next day, Travis crashes her Western Civ exam. After a passionate kiss (in the classroom! during the exam!), he waits for her outside and they tour Springfield. He already knows more about the place than Winnie does, which underscores his decision not to go to college: he thinks it limits one’s education. Winnie doesn’t quite agree; she’s enjoying learning. She also won’t go into his rented room with him. (Although it’s not stated, she can hardly choose Josh if she sleeps with Travis now.) Clearly, things have changed. Winnie agrees to go to his performance at the Beanery on the day before T’giving; they’ll decide then where, if anywhere, this is going. She’s still trying to communicate with Josh,  who is super busy, but he agrees to meet and talk things out….Wednesday night at 10:30 pm. Winnie agrees, and is beside herself with joy, until she remembers that’s also her night to see Travis and decide about him. 

On the big night, Lauren lends Winnie her BMW so she can keep both dates. One of Travis’s songs is clearly about her, and how she’s taken herself away from him. He’s very perceptive, because by now, she knows she’s only there to say goodbye. Travis makes one last offer: will she come to L.A. with him? Winnie says no, she can’t. Not just for Josh, or her friends, but for herself. She’s got to settle down. They say goodbye as friends, and Winnie has plenty of time to get back to campus. Until a truck tries to run the red on a cross street and she gets T-boned. She’s hurt bad, the car’s hurt bad…

We also get Josh’s POV, for the first time since book 1. He can’t believe he’s getting stood up again. He’s been falling for Winnie, despite suspecting that she toys with guys for the fun of it, and now he feels like a chump. Also, we find out that he’s an army brat, and since his parents are in Germany, he’ll be spending T’giving with some unnamed friends. 

Winnie gets back to campus after midnight. No permanent damage to her, only to the car. And it’s too late to get a bus to Jacksonville in time for dinner at the Windchime. First she cries, then she calls home and leaves a message, then she falls asleep in the lobby. Which is where Josh finds her. Finally, they communicate. Is she self-destructive? “I probably try to come off more exotic and complex than I really am. I just don’t think sometimes and I get carried away and then I try to cover up for myself and I just make things worse.” Well said, and remember this later. She also comes clean about Travis, and tells Josh that’s over and she’s chosen him. They plan to drive (in his roommate’s car) to Jacksonville; for now they fall asleep together. Aw…

Thanksgiving goes well, and she and Josh are all cozy on Monday, but when she goes back to her room, there’s Travis. The Beanery gig is long term, and he’s going to stay and try to get her to give him another chance. Yikes! 

Lauren: We meet Greg Sukamaki, editor of the U of S Weekly Journal, who is reviewing and fact-checking the hazing article. It could be very, very bad or very very good, depending on how it’s received. Lauren is more laid back now, but her new wardrobe includes parachute pants: surely that’s an error? This will be her third piece in the Journal; what was the second? The housing crisis? She’s nervous about naming Mark; Dash warns her that if they don’t publish, with all relevant details, they’re part of the problem, not the solution. Greg is more worried about naming Hammond: how sure are they that he knew and didn’t stop the hazing? They’ve got until the day before Thanksgiving to submit the final draft. 

Lauren and Dash are doing approach/avoidance. Dash does not approve of Hammond and the “Inter-rat Council.” He asks Lauren out for the following night, but she has to attend a sorority dinner. Dash is suspicious: is she going to give Tri Beta a heads-up before their article is published? She can’t explain to him that she has to get kicked out, not quit. They kiss, lightly. 

Meanwhile, Hammond, Mark and Marielle have a powwow about the hazing article. (Hammond has a connection at the Journal who got him an advance copy.) There could be serious consequences (expulsion, Hammond losing his internship), and Mark wants to wring Howard’s neck. Thus proving what a thug he is. Marielle wants to suppress the story by suppressing Lauren. Which requires expelling her from Tri Beta, woohoo! (Also, they’re in the Beanery, where Travis is playing and singing; Marielle thinks he’s hot, which I find odd; I should think she couldn’t see past the flannel.) 

Courtney calls Lauren in to interrogate her about writing a piece that “cruelly and falsely maligns our Greek system,” and Lauren doesn’t dare apologize or ask for clemency. She’ll have to depledge; Courtney seems to hate that it came to this, while Marielle brays about what bad news Lauren has always been. So she’s freeeeeee! Except, when she calls her mother to tell her this, Maman sees right through her. She had to have “really [asked] for it” (true, of course), so she’s cut off financially after all. (It doesn’t help that Lauren forgot about the time difference, and it was 1 am in London.) She can get back in the will if she leaves “that cowboys-and-Indians school of yours” and transfers to an approved Eastern college, but no way is Lauren giving up what she’s gained so far. But as far as giving up, that’s what she’s doing with her gadgets and a lot of her mom-chosen wardrobe. Which shows how sheltered she’s been: she should be selling this stuff, because now she’s gonna need cash. 

And sure enough, Hammond tracks her down outside the Journal office and tries to sweet-talk her. First he gives her basset-hound eyes about not asking for his side of it, and when Lauren doesn’t give in to that, he starts macking on her. She resists that, too, but not fast enough to keep Dash from seeing it. Oh dear. He won’t let her get a word out; just wheels and tells her to f off back to her sorority. (Okay, he doesn’t drop an F bomb.) Lauren blames herself for not slapping Hammond away as soon as he approached her. Winnie suggests that she give Dash time to cool off. “If you’re patient enough, anything can work out.” Which can also be passive aggression, hm? 

We’re told that Lauren flew to San Francisco for T’giving with her uncle, who was in favor of her getting out of the gilded cage: being like her mother would be a waste of potential. Monday morning, Winnie takes her down to Mac’s Foreign Auto to see what the mechanic calls “the sardine can”. Ulp. But it’s another symbol of how free Lauren is now. “Driving it was like wearing a badge with Rich written across it.” She plans to get it fixed, then sell it and buy a used car. Except, wait for it, mom had cancelled her car insurance the day before the accident. Well, she wanted to make her own way in the world…

Faith: She’s feeling very in control of her life. The AiW rehearsals are going well, she cut loose from Hammond, and she’s on good terms with Brooks. Then she goes to see Brooks play soccer. Melissa is also there, and Faith introduces them. Melissa smiles! She makes conversation! She acts like a girl! Faith feels uncomfortable, for some odd reason.

We also get Melissa’s POV for the first time since book 1. She’s in the weight room, and Brooks offers to spot for her. They have an undeniable connection, and Melissa can feel her facade starting to crack. But when he asks for a date, she turns him down, because “getting close to people could only mean pain.” Melissa is a rock; Melissa is an i-i-i-island. Later, when the others are sighing in anticipation of T’giving. she gets more and more tense, and finally storms out of the room. She wants to be alone so she can cry out her misery, so of course Brooks shows up. He prods her to open up, and she finally crumbles and tells him how miserable holidays, and for that matter, regular days, are at her house. Mom will be working, Dad will be drunk, and brother will most likely be absent. Brooks listens without judgment, then invites her to his house for T’giving. She doesn’t have to answer right away, but the offer is there. 

On Thanksgiving Eve, Faith and KC are at the bus station, waiting for Winnie, and since this is before cell phones, they have no way of knowing she can’t show up. Brooks does show up, and Faith is looking forward to spending time with him as a friend, until Melissa arrives just in time to get the last seat on the bus. She’s still uncertain about being Brooks’s guest, but he reassures her, then KISSES HER, in front of Faith. Faith wants to disappear, but figures it’s what she gets after Brooks had to watch her losing her mind over Hammond. 

KC: Aces the Intro to Business exam. She’s coming to terms with not being a Tri Beta. It’s less easy to come to terms with always being short of cash, so she starts job hunting. No luck, until she gets an unusual break. Matthew Kallander (Winnie’s one-date wonder from Intro to Film, remember?) is putting together a calendar: U of S students costumed and made up to look like golden-age movie stars. KC will be his Katherine Hepburn, if he agrees to let her be his business consultant, for 20% of the profits. Her suggestion are quite good: have six boys and six girls instead of twelve girls, shoot the photos in a mini-studio in the Creative Arts building, instead of renting a studio downtown and so forth. Guess KC is learning a few things in her business classes! 

The photo shoot is eventful: KC crosses paths with Courtney, who is posing as Grace Kelly, and we and KC meet Peter Dvorsky, photographer. And when she gets back from Thanksgiving, there are several letters waiting. The calendar has already been previewed (that was fast, especially for back then) and now she’s being wooed. The Gammas want her to come to tea and share beauty tips. So do the Epsi Phis, who sound like a bunch of muffinheads (“Could you please, please come!”) and one personally from Courtney Conner, basically apologizing for “misunderstanding and ignorance” and asking to meet one-on-one. Well well. 

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We’re told that Winnie is known for slacking until the last minute, then rolling in and getting an A on the exam. Faith’s theater skills come in handy when she has to make up KC for the calendar. We’re told the BMW is white. Was the color ever mentioned before? I hate white cars: totally impractical, and not nice to look at even when they’ve just been washed. Lauren’s reasoning is that if she hadn’t been forced to pledge Tri Beta, she would not have met Hammond, and would not have messed things up with Dash. Could be, or maybe if she hadn’t been a Tri Beta, she wouldn’t have been able to get the hazing story and wouldn’t have impressed Dash. Who can know when and where the thread is cut? 

I’d give this a B minus. It’s well-written, but the first half drags. I don’t really relate to Sam: even in the 80s, I never knew anyone that conservative, and as I’ve said below, she’s not plausible for the demographic she’s supposed to be from. If this had been a standalone, I probably would have forgotten about it pretty quick. But the series picks up speed in the next installments.

“College life the way it REALLY is.” Maybe. I thought Freshman Dorm was the most realistic, but of course that came later. RM had a very conservative tone, but Campus Fever was so melodramatic sometimes. So much nastiness. And the characters had such heavy names: Trevlyn, Woyzek, Orsini. In RM, it’s Hill, Conklin, Davies and Swanson. And later, Martin, Jones for heaven’s sake, Anderson and Perelli (ooh, ethnic!). Overall, this was, while not quite real life as I knew it, more relatable than CF. Other people must have thought the same, because there were twenty installments, while CF only had eight.

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Samantha Hill, another naive midwesterner, is a freshman at Hawthorne College, about an hour outside Atlanta, GA. I think whoever wrote this had no clue about life in the heartland; more details later.  Sam is tall, blonde/blue, fair and freckled. Someone in a later book describes her as “more all-American than Christie Brinkley.” 

We skip the arrival on campus and orientation to cut right to Suite 2C, Rogers House, where we also meet outrageous Roni Davies (from Atlanta), conservative, pre-med Terry Conklin (Philadelphia), and elegant Stacy Swanson (Boston). Stacy arrives wearing a linen suit and snakeskin pumps — good grief! Like one of my college roommates: swanning around in a dress on move-in day while the rest of us wore jeans or shorts. 

Sam is the oldest of five. She has eeeeeeverything planned out: she’ll major in English, get a teaching certificate, and marry Jon Mayer. They’ve been a couple since early sophomore year, perfectly compatible, they even look alike. They’ve also never consummated; later, Sam will think about “all the times she and Jon had pulled apart.” This relationship? Is doomed. More than one character agrees. Yet it’s “unimaginable” to Sam that either of them could get involved with someone else. 

The first half is mostly repetition on the theme of Sam finding out that things are not going to work out precisely the way she’s planned them. I have to admire her work ethic, though. She had planned to jog every morning, which she does, but when it interferes with getting washed and changed before class, she gets up earlier. Dang! She’s not bombing anything, like Cathy in CF, but the curriculum sure is different. Sounds like her high school was conservative, and this is fairly liberal. She’s not as irritating as Cathy, but the gee-whiz attitude does get to me. Honey, it’s college: of course it’s different. What would be the point if it was like high school? And what would be the point of going to college out of state if the culture wasn’t different from back home? 

There are some highlights, like a convocation where Sam wears her (probably Gunne Sax) prom gown and Stacy puts her hair up for her and lends her pearls. Stacy herself throws on something designer; Terry wears a frumpy sack, and Roni knocks everyone sideways by being the height of fashion if it was 1944 (rolled hair, suit with padded shoulders, white gloves). She’s a tall, stunning redhead, so she’s a huge hit. I remember the convocation at my first college, where we all had to sign The Book, whatever that was I don’t remember. Anyway, that being 1988, with the first rumblings of grunge, we were all trying to take it to extremes. I wore a faux-Edwardian gown, and others wore Ren Faire garb, grandpa’s tuxedo, and like that. But the person I really remember was the guy who wore a Confederate Army uniform. (Well, the jacket and cap, anyway.) Try doing that today! 

Anyway, Sam is all shined up, and guys are hitting on her right and left. She turns them all down, including one guy we’ll get to later, and Stacy sneers at her — what is she, a virgin? Yes, and “so there.” (Seriously.) Later, Stacy apologizes and Sam accepts, but clearly, they’re wired very differently. Stacy is high strung and “gets bent out of shape too easily,” as Terry puts it. And Sam seems to think that she should get exactly as much out of life as she puts into it. Yeah…

Also, there’s sorority rush. Terry doesn’t have the time of the money. Roni has BT, DT, and although it’s not stated, it would be a waste of time, because she’d get kicked out sooner or later for her outrageous behavior. Sam and Stacy both rush, and are chosen to pledge, Alpha Pi Alpha, henceforth known as APA. Sam gets in because she’s a legacy, and Stacy gets in because she’s awesome. Despite the fact that Stacy thinks the sororities are “all just as boring.” She has a pattern of disdaining everything she does, but not coming up with an alternative.

Sam’s favorite class is Political Science. Of course: she’s never had to question anything before, and now she’s getting woke. And it’s especially interesting because there are so many different people in it. Like, uh, Aaron Goldberg, a junior, one of the guys she met at the tea. (I have to wonder what he was doing at a freshman event. On the prowl?) New Yorker, very forward, crooked teeth, taller than Sam. And boy, is he woke. But he puts his money where his mouth is, as we’ll see in later books. Anyway, he’s always turning up, and Stacy takes one look at him and swoons. 

So, Poli Sci. They’re doing a section on the politics of food, which is a new concept to Sam. Dammit, how can she be from a farm community and not know what a joke it is how little farmers earn? And this was published during the farm foreclosure crisis! Anyway, they have a project. For the following week, they’re going to be on the Third World diet. Rice and beans and occasionally fish. It’s only the lunches that are obligatory, but Professor Lewis suggests they make it a 24/7 thing (one week only). Sam is the first to agree to do this, then Aaron seconds it. The kickoff is dinner Saturday night, at Prof. Lewis’s house. Sam has to skip a sorority party to be there, which does not go over too well. Aaron has a brother in the Peace Corps (I forget if that’s continuity), and he has all kinds of enlightening ideas to share. He also asks Sam out. It’s hard to say no, but she does, without mentioning Jon. And without writing to him that night; she’d rather think about Aaron. 

Later in the week, Stacy joins the poverty-meals table in the dining hall. Mostly so she can look starry-eyed at Aaron, but also, as we’ll later find out, because fasting is nothing new to her. 

Then it’s homecoming week, which means more APA parties. (Sam doesn’t understand why couples keep going upstairs.) Then homecoming Saturday. Each suite in Rogers House is supposed to host a party with a theme of some foreign country; 2C is assigned Australia. But first, the homecoming game. Stacy wants them all to wear skirts and sweaters. Sam gives in so easily, I want to smack her. I would have said, “Sure, Ms. Gotbux, when I have to take my skirt and sweater to the cleaners to remove the mustard, beer and random dirt on them, YOU can pay the bill!” Also, Hawthorne colors are yellow and green. Blaugh. 

And then the party. Roni saw to it that their Down-Under punch really sends people down under, even though they’d been told NO BOOZE. Sam gets mellow talking to Aaron, agrees to go for a walk with him, and wakes up in the small hours no longer a virgin. Finally something to break up the repetition of “Gee, things aren’t turning out exactly the way I planned.” Also, it’s slightly rapey. Sam doesn’t know she’d been drinking alcohol, but Aaron later says he “knew damn well”. He also says “Hey, that’s my dorm,” and Sam takes the bait. 

Sam’s biggest regret is that she was saving her first time for Jon, and now that won’t happen. She’s betrayed him and spoiled her own dream. This is basically the biggest example of how all her plans prove unworkable in a new environment, and all her beliefs are being challenged. (In one of her phone convos with Jon, she tells him that ever since she arrived on campus, she seems to have been looking at the world upside down.)

And it gets worse. When she gets back to 2C, she’s somewhat ticked off at Roni for spiking the punch, and when Terry says “What about J—“ Sam breaks down crying. And to cap it off, Stacy is spitting mad, because she’s the one who invited Aaron to the party, so she’s not speaking to Sam for quite a while. Poor Stacy; this may be the first time she didn’t get something she wanted.

Sam is determined not to tell Jon about this — there’s no need, since she sees it as a one-time error. Sad irony, though: she’s so confused now, she needs Jon to get her through this — the one problem she can’t discuss with him! And she thinks she won’t have to talk to him for a couple of weeks, but guess what. He calls, needing to clear his conscience because he met a girl and wanted to kiss her, even though he didn’t. So they’re okay to see other people now, right? Uh…

After numerous unreturned calls, Sam agrees to meet Aaron in The Eatery. She doesn’t blame him for what happened; if there’s any blame, she puts it on the alcohol. (But she also doesn’t blame Roni for supplying the alcohol.) I’unno. I guess unless you’re attending Bob Jones or Brigham Young, someplace conducive to celibacy, being a virgin on a college campus is being a ticking time bomb. Unfamiliar circumstances, more temptation…unless there’s a built-in failsafe, it’s nigh impossible to maintain chastity. 

Aaron says “I should have made sure that you knew what you were doing, instead of talking myself into believing you did.” Remember this in a later book. He wants them to keep seeing each other, and doesn’t understand why she says “I can’t.” See, she wants to resume celibacy, and she doesn’t think she can stay chaste while dating or even hanging out with a guy she’s already slept with. Which does make sense. 

Back to Poli Sci. Instead of a midterm exam, there will be a midterm project. They will divide into groups, and they have to plan and carry out “an action project that will demonstrate the principles of effective political action, the moral uses of power.” A guy called Alex appoints himself the leader in Sam’s group, and his plan is to stage a protest. The board of trustees are having a meeting, and Alex wants them to divest their South African holdings (this was, of course, during apartheid). He says it’s “a guaranteed A”, but it’s also guaranteed attention. 

I wouldn’t say the protest got out of hand, exactly, but a) they all got arrested and b) turns out, during the trustees’ meeting, they voted to divest their South African holdings. Sam has a spasm the whole time she’s in the security office; seems she’s never been in any kind of trouble before in her entire life. She did not resist arrest, so she’s got one less charge against her. But she should have read the handbook, instead of assuming the others knew what they were doing. “How is anyone supposed to know the difference,” the security chief asks,  “between a class project and a ‘real’ demonstration?” Good point. But I wonder what this guy would think of flash mobs? 

And this is where Sam is foolish, IMO. If she’d read the student handbook, she would have known that they needed a permit to use a PA system, and that where they were was not one of the designated places to assemble. Now, I can understand her no-sex policy, but early on, Sam claims to “[pride] herself on getting to the top by following all the rules.” Apart from the fact that that doesn’t always work — sometimes you have to game the system if you’re going to get ahead — she should be kicking herself for not having read the handbook. Y’know, the one that’s full of rules? 

Sam is really down after this. Roni observes, “You’re human after all…Sam Hill can sleep late and cut class…and be a grump in the morning.” Out of nowhere, Stacy offers to call her father, who is a lawyer, and ask his advice. Then Aaron calls (he wasn’t in her group) to tell her Alex set up a lot of it: got his friends to start chanting, and called security to make sure they’d show up. 

And Sam made the front page of the campus paper again! (The first time was for the Third World diet challenge.) APA does not approve, especially since Sam is only a pledge. The officers decided (without asking Sam for her side of it) to reserve judgment until the dean made his decision. Which Sam calls out as hypocritical. During rush, the APA prez had said “We’re live-and-let-live.” But she’d meant alcohol and opposite-sex guests. Protesting is another matter, my deah. The prez says she’ll have to change her ways if she wants to be an APA member, so Sam resigns, figuring that if they give ultimatums, they’re not worth it. 

Then she calls Jon, wanting to tell him about this, and is told “He’s out with his girlfriend.” Okay, he doesn’t think of Li as his girlfriend; that’s a conclusion his roommate jumped to. Still, it’s clear that they both have to have lives that consist of more than just filling in time between letters and phone calls. 

The other roommates go with Sam to the dean’s office. Well, Stacy has to be dragged there; she’s still sitting on a tack about Aaron. Roni is dressed conservatively*; she must have borrowed from someone, or maybe it’s the one ladylike outfit her parents insisted she bring. Dr. Lewis is there too, and so is Aaron. Sam gets all charges dropped! Also, Stacy booked out as soon as Aaron showed up. 

Somehow, Sam and Aaron work it out that they can date without having sex, at least not yet. Sam still loves Jon, but she’s not devoted like she used to be. Basically, the world doesn’t make sense, so forget all these rigid rules. 

And Stacy commits an act of desperation. She gets her hair cut super short, dyes it weird colors, and gets a kind of designer-punk outfit. But she’s sooooo unhappy. She doesn’t want to be looked up to and envied, she wants to be loved, the way people love Sam. To be continued…

I do have to hand it to this series for starting right off with a main character having Teh Sex. IIRC, it happens once in CF, and I think never (onscreen) in FD. 

*And it’s interesting that both this and the first CF culminate in a visit to the dean’s office, and that, like Roni, Rachel in CF is dressed conservatively. “Different camouflage for different wars.” Also, Cathy and Sam both get unintentionally drunk and have to deal with their first hangover. (Although Cathy bounces back PDQ as soon as someone mentions shopping.)

We’ll see more of Aaron, naturally. He’s an SJW before we had the term, which I don’t mind so much, but what I do mind is how he basically thinks anywhere that’s not NYC is “not the real world”. Yeah right. I’d like to see him bust his ass all spring and summer planting and tending a crop, only to have a tornado wipe it out right before harvest time. But in one convo with Sam, he opines, “…we have shiny kitchen floors just so people can sell us floor wax.” Sam agrees that “…maybe we have television just so that people can sell us kitchen floors and floor wax.” I hate to admit it, but it kinda does work that way. 

Sam has to borrow a sophisticated outfit from Stacy, for rush week, and a slinky dress from Roni, for a more rowdy APA party. There’s a lot of borrowing in this series, and not much keeping of accounts, which will also come up later.

Foreshadowing: Stacy is model-thin and is hardly ever seen eating, but apparently binged on cookies while Sam was out. She also sleeps with a stuffed rabbit, so we know the ice princess has a soft side. When Sam calls Roni on the spiked punch, her defense is that other suites were doing it too, and “…[to really crack down] they’d have to expel the whole dorm.” So Roni likes to drink, eh? And so does Terry’s father, because Terry mixes up a hangover cure for Sam that she’s made for her father “a lot of times.”

Also, a bit of a continuity error. On the first day, Roni plans to hitchhike to the mall (how does she know where it is?), which presumes she doesn’t own a car. In later books, she supposedly has a phantom car that’s always in the shop. It’ll finally show up at the start of sophomore year: a convertible, of course.  

Lewisboro, as described, does not sound like a farm town. It sounds more like a suburb. And some things don’t make sense unless Sam is from a fundie community. Two kids breaking into backyard sheds is a crime wave? Suburb. No alcohol at parties? Fundie. Well, we’re tossed the bone of one party she went to where “they’d all poured themselves some Scotch.” Which does not compute: the one party that was not dry would have been a huge event, not something to be mentioned casually. Sam and Jon resisting sex multiple times sounds like they made a pledge. Not just “We’re not ready,” but “We made a promise to a higher power.” Sam is aghast at Roni’s mention of hitchhiking, because she was raised to never, never do that, “even if your car broke down.” So that would mean a suburb, because in a farm community, if you’re stranded, sooner or later someone you know will come along, and you can get a ride with them. 

Aaron’s description of NYC includes people at the opera house “transformed by the music”. Surely he means “transfixed” or “transported”? Music can’t physically change people, however good it is. At the dorm party, Roni uses Sam’s wastebasket, “carefully scrubbed, of course,” as a punch bowl. Uchhhhhhh.

There’s an abrupt code-switch in the series. The first three books had a smaller, more delicate font, which meant more words to the page. Also, the “author” was Susan Blake, and after 3, it was Alison Blair. So when those changes happen, the tone changes slightly. Not jarringly, but definitely a faster pace. 

A+! KC’s story is touching, Faith grows a spine, and go Lauren!

This one is about Parents’ Weekend. Lauren’s parents won’t be there, but Winnie’s mom will, and Faith’s parents and sister. As for KC’s parents, we’ll see. (Dash doesn’t answer when Lauren asks if his parents will be there; remember this later.)

Winnie: Josh asks her out, in advance. Yay! Then Mom shows up for Parents’ Weekend. She’s encouraging, then she gives Winnie the letters from Travis. She’d thought Travis had forgotten her, but in fact his letters had been misdirected. And he thought she forgot him. Hard for her to choose whether to pursue Travis or Josh, since neither relationship has quite gelled yet. She calls Travis and leaves a message; hopefully he’ll call back. The pay phone is almost directly opposite Josh’s door, so she’s terrified of being overheard. Oh, I remember how hard it used to be to find privacy. How glad I am (for the current generation) that cell phones and social media have put an end to that! It was hell for us. 

On the night of the Official Date With Josh (he sent her a kooky invitation), she’s all dressed up, hyped up, revved up…and then she gets called to the phone. It’s Travis. She intends to talk to him only for a minute, but of course she doesn’t notice the time until shortly after she was supposed to be at Geppetto’s Cafe. Josh did wait for her, but left just before she finally showed up. Argh. (Oh, and Travis wrote a song for her. Squee!) 

KC: We find her having a guilt trip over never having worn the t-shirt her parents had custom made for her graduation: Presenting Kahia Cayanne Angeletti, University of Springfield Freshman Extraordinaire. On tie-dye, yet. I can see why she’s torn. I mean, on the one hand, I wish my parents had had that much pride in me. OTOH, it’s kind of pretentious, calling a freshman “extraordinaire”. What had she proved, besides getting into U of S, which a couple thousand others have also done? She’d asked for a briefcase and a computer; she got the briefcase, a book on using health foods to manage stress, and the shirt. Did she really think they could afford a computer? (1990, remember; it was pretty much like buying a car.)

KC reports on the soccer-shirt project for Intro to Business, and she still still has her shields up against Steven, because she thinks he was putting her down by introducing her to his father. He wasn’t, but he does something else that makes KC’s head explode: he intends to donate the enterprise’s profits to a food bank. (KC had been counting on her share of the $$, and of course she’d already quit the mail-delivering job.) Steven offers to lend her money; she’d rather starve. He tells her he’d thought the food bank idea would impress her; it’s the kind of thing her parents would do. Which is why she’s not impressed. He’s so earnest that she can’t accept his affections. 

So KC storms away, calls home and takes out her frustrations on her father. First she’s cringing at the thought of a long-haired, dashiki-wearing middle-aged guy on campus. Then she’s further aggravated by calling the restaurant and being on hold so long. She dances around the subject before telling him flat out not to come. She has kind of got a point when she tells him he shouldn’t close up or leave the restaurant short-handed over the weekend, but “I don’t want you to come” is pretty much unforgivable. Dad, being a new-ager, says, “I’m not sure what I did to make you say something like that.” Good response, dad! KC feels her heart turn to ice, as she should. And of course, as soon as the weekend gets underway, she starts regretting his absence. For instance, the tension between the Crowleys makes her wish Dad was there: he’s always been good at getting people to talk things out. 

Since Faith is not invited to ODT’s Saturday night party, KC offers to spy for her and find out if Suzanna is Hammond’s date after all. What she mostly hears about is what a loser a pledge named Howard Benmann is, and how Mark Geisslinger (Book 1, remember? He set up Lauren’s humiliation) wants him out, despite his family’s connections. He’s going to haze Howard, humiliate him, and get him to drop out of rush. Hammond tells Mark and his crew to do what they have to do, just don’t involve him. Oh, and he did break up with Suzanna. But he’s also macking on yet another girl. KC didn’t plan on telling anyone about the hazing, but when she catches on that Lauren is looking for that kind of info, she tells her, in hopes that this will “make up for…everything.” 

After all the Parents’ Weekend drama, KC goes back to Jacksonville with Faith and Marlee. It sinks in that she’ll be half a person if she’s all business, no sentiment. With that in mind, she goes into the Windchime. Ah, such cozy memories! Dad charms the customers, but he’s out of earshot when they want dessert. KC serves them, breaking her vow to never work there again, and admits to being “part of the Angeletti family”. After a tearful embrace with Dad, she tells him he has to improve his business ethic, but in the context of, people need to know how terrific the place is. Back on campus, she starts decorating her room! 

Lauren: Dash encourages her to stay in Tri Beta just long enough to get some dirt about hazing. She may have lost a few pounds, but I like that it’s not a goal with her to get model-skinny. KC is still holding a grudge; Lauren tells her to figure out why she’s so nasty. At the Tri Beta house, Lauren acts super-helpful and conformist; this is easier now that she knows she has other options. She teases it out of Marielle that some hazing will go on. She wants to get a good story for several reasons: to prove herself, to impress Dash, and to get expelled from Tri Beta. Dash mentions that it’s a moral quandary: hoping to get a good story means hoping something horrible happens.

On Saturday night, Lauren lurks on Greek Row, but doesn’t find out anything until KC tells her about Howard Benmann. The hazing is awful; I won’t get into it, but Lauren puts a stop to it by the simple means of standing in the street screaming her lungs out. The guys take off and leave Howard about to die of alcohol poisoning. Dash hears the screaming and rushes to her side. They get help for Howard…but after a passionate kiss. Sure is a lot of that! Anyway, Howard is okay after a night and day in the hospital. The Journal won’t use his name, but he’ll testify if it comes to that. (There’s no followup on Lauren + Dash in this installment, but believe me, it’s not a loose end.)

Faith can’t focus on anything except Hammond. He can arrange a weekend at a mountain cabin, and he’ll end things with Suzanna “soon”. Faith is conflicted about this: when is “soon”, and is she ready for what will happen during an overnight?

She’s volunteering at a day-care center, while stressing about coming up with an idea an independent-study project. She’s a good organizer: they’re acting out the Mad Tea Party and five kids all want to be the Dormouse, so Faith makes it a group effort. (And this kills me: one of them stands swiveling back and forth: “I was the door.”)

Both KC and Winnie think she should tell Hammond that it’s Suzanna or her before she gets any more involved. She does, and he promises to break up with Suzanna as soon as she shows up for the weekend. Which leaves her alone on Saturday night, until Marlee shows up, having refused to ride back with their parents. She’s been fighting with them a lot, and it doesn’t help that their default response is “Faith never had problems like that.” She got further fed up with teachers comparing her to Faith, so she started cutting class and getting high. “Did drugs,” no specifics, but the other kids were “real losers” and she got busted. By the school, not the cops. 

This is bad enough, but Faith is further devastated when KC tells her that Hammond knew about the hazing and didn’t stop it, and that he was flirting with “Willa”, whoever she is. Faith has to accept that her parents are not good listeners, to either of their daughters, so she can’t rely on them. It’s the last straw when Merideth tells her that Faith + Hammond is common knowledge. When she can track down Hammond, she tells him to forget her, because she’s not the same person who fell for him a few weeks earlier. 

It’s going to be work, work, work from now on; forget about guys! Starting with her independent-study idea, carrying over the daycare experience: experimental Alice in Wonderland, with multiple people playing one character, and people playing inanimate objects. She and Brooks are on okay terms now, but he’s still in the story for a reason. Stay tuned… 

There’s still a lot of connection between the characters. KC and Winnie know quite a bit about Faith and Hammond, maybe more than Faith wishes they did. Lauren accepts KC’s olive branch, though as I recall, they never really become BFFs. The other girls talk Winnie through the agony of having unintentionally stood up Josh. And for once, someone borrows Lauren’s car for a good purpose: she offers it to Faith, so she can take Marlee back to Jacksonville. 

Also, Hammond is a commitmentphobe. Suzanna told him he’s only faithful to himself, right before she threw her engagement ring at him. And he feels too old for the beery obnoxiousness most of the other guys wallow in. With both him and Courtney (as we’ll see later) the kind of people mature and stable enough to be officers are too mature for Greek life!  

Tidbits: KC hasn’t watched Best and the Beloved for weeks, and the storyline from the last time she saw is still ongoing! New hangout: Hondo’s Cafe, home of college pennants and sub sandwiches.

Big fat D. Cardboard characters, juvenile plot, gratuitous slapstick, and about a sixth-grade sensibility. It gets better, but this series is definitely the poorest of the three.

I’m switching gears now for Campus Fever, which started in 1985. I read the second installment before I read the first. The others are okay for what they are, but this one is so awful that if I’d read it first, I never would have tried the others. Well, here goes! 

Hastings College in Boston is the setting, and we meet Cathy Thomas as her plane is coming in for a landing at Logan Airport. How can you bring everything you need for college on a plane? The only people I ever knew at college who flew in were international students, and they’d budgeted to buy what they couldn’t bring.

Well, Cathy may not have brought bedding and a desk lamp, but she brings every trope about Midwesterners. She wears a white blouse and plaid kilt the first day; in fact, all her clothes are generic mall gear. She’s never tasted alcohol. She draws a blank when someone mentions The Wreck of the Hesperus. In fact, almost any time someone makes a cultural reference, her response is, “Duh, what’s that mean?”

At the airport, she meets Amy Trevlyn, pseudo-punk (c’mon, a true punk would not be in college), and before she gets into her dorm, Rachel Pirnie, nouveau riche from NYC. Rachel is a trip: she wears head-to-toe designer, her family’s driver brought her to school, she brought alcohol — “enough to make a decent batch of kir”. She even identifies the dorm (Windsor Hall) as “Great building…Georgian.” Totally urban, and fun to read about. And if you’re wondering why she’s not at one of the Seven Sisters, she already flunked out of Vassar. (The next book is Amy’s, so I’ll wait until then to describe her fully.) 

Cathy’s roommate is Paula Heil, genius computer major when computers were mysterious things. Other residents of Windsor Hall are Leslie Shaeffer, “mouseburger”; Susan Radcliffe and Daphne Reisling, bluebloods; Nan Deluca, stoner; Agatha Mitchell, Texas debutante; and Terry Smith, jock. Alluded to but not shown are Cynthia Woyzek, Jacqui Orsini, and Louisa (no last name yet). 

Also at the airport Cathy, meets Mr. Wonderful, John Wickland. A junior, a Phi Delt, gentlemanly and handsome, with dreamy brown eyes. He helps Cathy with her luggage, and because she’s fumbling with a tennis racket, he calls her Chrissy (as in Evert), which he’ll continue to do throughout the story. Cathy swoons, and apparently doesn’t notice or even meet any other guys during the first month of classes. Well, except for one guy who notices her, but I’ll get to that in a moment. 

First, we have to have Susan and Daphne throw down. Susan has designs on John, too and won’t tolerate Cathy trying to cut in on her action. Amy stands up for Cathy, which makes them BFF, and at a check-out-the-new-prospects Tri Delt party, John shows up…with Susan. (We later find out it was a blind date.) Cathy asks John to dance, Susan shuts that down, and Cathy leaves in tears. 

But she’d already been at the party long enough to meet someone else. Richard Mealy (some of the names in this are so on-the-nose, they could be zinc oxide), unattractive, socially inept, but still a member of Tri Delt. (He must be a triple legacy, is all I can figure.) He’ll come into it later…

Meanwhile, since Cathy was a track star in high school, she tries out for Hastings’ team, and gets on. I find that somewhat odd — wouldn’t it make more sense for her to have been accepted onto the team before orientation, and maybe on scholarship as well (like Melissa in FD)? Anyway, she has that to deal with, as well as a few basic freshman dilemmas: her schedule doesn’t leave much time to get across campus, she can’t write an essay for beans — which leads to the classic exchange. “I’m afraid I don’t understand—“ [her grade] “I’m afraid you don’t understand. Hence your grade.” Towards the end she tells John, “The truth is, I keep waiting for something else to go wrong!” Not a healthy attitude! Try taking charge of your life, huh? 

Then there’s a mixer; Cathy gets loaded for the first time in her life, and guess what kind of impression she makes on John. Later, we get his POV; he’s wondering if she likes him. Like he’d even notice, much less get hung up on, one freshman girl who he met for two minutes? And Cathy is not distracted by anyone else, either. It’s really jarring, how there seem to be no “extras”; no unnamed characters, only the key players. 

Now, are you ready for this? Susan and Daphne have a bet: fifty dollars are riding on Susan getting to bed with John before midterms*. Susan writes a steamy love letter to Richard, supposedly from Cathy, and posts it on the Tri Delt bulletin board. John sees this and doesn’t know what to think. Richard asks Cathy to a movie, and afterward starts macking on her. She slugs him, he shows her the letter, and he adds that two girls (Susan and Daphne, of course) told him Cathy was into him. When he describes them, she promises to get back at them. “For both of us.” But we never see him again, poor sod. 

Cathy, Rachel and Amy organize a silent-treatment campaign against Susan and Daphne. (Nobody liked them to begin with, and they’re so self-absorbed it takes days for them to catch on.) The Tri Delts get brought in on it, and I have to admit, the one funny bit is when Susan calls John and he pretends never to have heard of “a chick named Radcliffe”. This culminates in a cafeteria food fight, after which all five have to appear before the Dean of Women, who comes off like a Girl Scout leader. No punishment for our three heroines, but Susan and Daphne have to make a public apology or they’ll get suspended. (Seriously? No penalty for the silent treatment nonsense? Never happen today.) 

But what of John + Cathy, you might ask? Well, the night before the food fight, he accidentally-on-purpose encounters Cathy in the computer lab. SYNTAX ERROR SYNTAX ERROR…Man, am I glad those days are over. Anyway, he helps her with her program, then they go out for a coffee and have one of the most unnatural, stilted, poorly written conversations I have ever read; “After all” is said twice in the same paragraph. But at least it gets them walking home in the romantic moonlight and “Shut up and let me kiss you.” 

When the dust settles, Cathy competes in her first track meet,  wins one event, and realizes she just has to relax and be true to herself. Aw. Later, she encounters Susan, who apologizes for real. Cathy accepts, and thinks maybe someday they can be friends. Aw, again. Honestly, if you took out the smoking, drinking, cursing and sex references, the setting could be changed to middle school. (Actually, in some school districts, leaving that stuff in would be accurate.) Although Cathy does come off rather like a seventh grader. And other characters treat her that way. Amy and Rachel call her “Indiana”; Amy tells her she needs a keeper; Rachel says “You’re supposed to be making friends, remember?” 

And the funny thing is, while Cathy is crying tears of joy after winning the half-mile, she thinks of John, Rachel, Amy and the track coach as “Friends [who] made winning possible.” But I don’t recall Cathy and Rachel hanging out together after this. From Amy’s POV, she considers Cathy a friend, though not a best friend, but she and Rachel don’t seem to have much use for each other. And Cathy and John are pretty much background characters after the second installment. It is interesting to see the different perspectives: someone can come off fairly well in one story and quite badly in another. 

And on the last page, we get the lead-in to the next installment. Amy’s SO, who Cathy has heard a lot about, although we haven’t until now, is English and in a band. His bandmate wrote to Amy, telling her the band is coming to Boston. Squee! But…the bandmate, not the SO himself, is the one who wrote to her? Red flag, obvs. Stay tuned…

*Daphne won the bet by default, but I’m assuming that Susan never paid, so Daphne never got that Ralph Lauren shirt she was jonesing for.  

_______________________________

This is the only series that uses language. (At least in this book; I’ll have to check the others.) Several instances of “bitch” (Cathy struggles to say it in her mind, but she does say it) and at least one “shit” and one “damn”. And a “douchebags”. There’s a lot of smoking, mild sexual references, and people drink to the point of intoxication, but with only reasonable consequences (missing class the next day, feeling foolish). There’s also a reference to Rachel having a date with a guy who had “the distinct impression that ‘no’ meant ‘yes’,” and while she does get away, it’s at the expense of a torn blouse. The term “date rape” was just coming into common use then.

Continuity and other errors: Amy claims to have been in a Twisted Sister video. That’s heavy metal, not punk! Rachel lights “another cigarette” when there can’t have been time for her to finish the previous one. Rachel puts a name tag on Cathy’s blouse, and Cathy apparently transferred it to the t-shirt she changed into afterwards. Daphne is described as a redhead, but in later installments, she and Susan are both blonde. The movie Richard and Cathy go to is supposedly a midnight screening, but they’re showing two movies, and it’s not quite 2 am when it lets out.

There are more topical references in this than in the other two college series: designer jeans, M-TV (sic), Hall and Oates, Mad Max and The Road Warrior. And the ghosting of Susan and Daphne is described as “Bitch busters…who you gonna call?”

And one thing: Rachel calls Susan and Daphne “the Harpies”. Maybe I wasn’t so much more sophisticated than Cathy, because she didn’t ask what that meant, while I had to look it up.

Lauren: Discouraging phone call with her mom. She wants to quit Tri Beta; mom will stop paying her tuition if she does. Her mood changes when she gets a letter from Dash. Her article will be published, and she’s invited to a Journal staff potluck. Woohoo! Back at Tri Beta, Marielle wants to take her to get her colors done. In the last book, she gave Lauren a makeup job that looked like Homer Simpson had set his cosmetics gun on Honey Boo Boo, so Lauren declines, choosing to go instead to the theater department’s costume sale. (Marielle advises her to avoid the clown outfits.) Winnie talks her into trying a vintage dress; Lauren is pleasantly surprised by the results. Winnie also suggests that Lauren get herself kicked out of Tri Beta, instead of quitting. 

At the potluck, Dash doesn’t recognize Lauren at first, since she’s wearing another vintage outfit, then says she looks normal and nice. We meet Richard and Alison, members of the Progressive Student Coalition. They’re about to engage in civil disobedience! Old houses, that old people live in, are going to be torn down for a parking lot. Students will stage a protest at a black-tie event in President’s Hall. If everyone votes yes, that is. Lauren votes yes, and hears her own voice for the first time. (Also, I love that more than one person said “Right on!” when a vote was called for.) 

Dash is not sure Lauren can be trusted, her being a sorority pledge and all. In keeping with wanting to get kicked out of Tri Beta, Lauren asks him to come with her to an open house. He’s dressed appropriately, but when Marielle tries to put him on the spot, he doesn’t back down. He and Lauren agree that bringing him to the Tri Beta house is a big step towards getting herself kicked out. I’unno, though. This could be seen as her using him. 

Afterwards, they’re at the housing protest, the purpose of which is to get on TV. See, the regents and donors won’t care about the housing issue in and of itself, but they will if it hurts their public image. Dash takes Lauren’s hand, not romantically, but supportively, as a friend. But, thanks to KC (see below), they get barred from the mansion by campus police, and when they’re trying to come up with a plan B, someone accuses Lauren of being an informer. Dash stands up for her, and she’s determined to find a way around security. 

She finds Hammond, who is bored to the teeth doing coverage of the uneventful regent’s banquet. His supervisor loves the idea of filming a protest, so Lauren is off the hook, and Hammond has eased his conscience about the dogfight, er, Trash Your Roommate prank. They get on the news, they’re campus heroes for a bit, and the regents back down. Oh, and instead of Courtney expelling Lauren from Tri Beta, she congratulates her, for going above and beyond in service to the community. This is why I like Courtney; stay tuned.

KC: Her new job, to earn back what she stole from Soccer, Inc., is delivering campus mail. “This is not exactly my ideal first step up the corporate ladder,” she snarls. O RLY?* She’s still mad at Lauren, still has a love/hate thing with Steven Garth, who wants her to meet his father when he visits campus. She tells Faith to be upfront with Hammond about his engagement, but can’t confess about her embezzlement.

At the Stop the World opening night, she introduces Steven to Winnie, Faith and, inadvertently, Lauren. He and Lauren don’t see eye to eye on the housing crisis. “They’ll do what everyone else does. They’ll get a loan.” Oh really, Mr. Gotbux? Lauren makes a comment that skewers KC (“Borrowing money isn’t always so easy, especially when you really need it.”) KC is choking on her guilt! 

And then, this is unbelievable: while KC is delivering the mail, she opens a note that was already in Faith and Lauren’s mailbox. She’s snooping because she thinks it’s from Hammond to Faith, and it’s supposedly KC’s duty to “protect” Faith, which is bad enough. But when she figures out it’s for Lauren, telling her where to meet for the protest, she freaking calls campus security. Okay, ostensibly it’s because she thinks it might be a violent protest, and Steven’s father will be there, but she wouldn’t have had to make that decision if she hadn’t opened someone else’s mail. (She does ask herself if maybe she’s doing this just to get back at Lauren for not getting her out of debt. Duh, ya think?)

But her karma catches up with her almost immediately. It takes forever to get the call made in privacy, which causes her to get to the bank right when they close. So she can’t cash her check until Monday, which will be too late, and two weeks of (what to her is) horrible, demeaning work wearing an unflattering uniform is for naught. (I wonder if the bank would have had Saturday hours? Probably depositing through the ATM was not yet an option.) 

Next night, she has dinner with Steven and his father, who is a cowboy-hat-wearing brash Texan. He approves of KC, and it appears he does not approve of his son’s work ethic. KC mistakenly thinks Steven was slumming with her, trying to prove something to his father. She blows up at Steven (again!) and finally tells him she stole from the business account. He’s not upset about that, at least not as much as about her yelling at him as usual. When they go to collect the shirts, at first they’re barely on speaking terms. Then they start talking it out, but the conclusion is that they’re too different to be together. Or too much alike. Or, IMO, KC doesn’t like herself, and has to deal with her issues before she can have a healthy relationship. 

*It’s not the job, it’s what you do with it, babe. A job that looks ideal might be a dead end. A job that seems unglamorous and unexciting might lead to a great opportunity or connection. And I despise the mindset that minimum wage deserves only minimum effort. 

Winnie: Passes by the Bradley Computer Center, a new(!) building, and feels compelled to go in, looking for Josh. He’s there, he’s friendly, he wants to hang out, she pleads studying again. Does she purposely create barriers to happiness? In Intro to Film, she meets Matthew Kallender, future Spielberg, who asks her for a Real Date, a week in advance. She’s so impressed, she says yes. He’s very schedule-oriented, and very opinionated. Everything with him relates to pop culture, especially movies.

And of course Josh sees them together. (He’d left a note earlier, saying he hoped to see her at the homecoming game. Oops!) Winnie wonders about people “acting from the heart” (title of a movie shown in class) and thinks Lauren is the only one of them who is doing that. On that note, she tells Matthew she’s not interested, but refrains from telling him he’s a boring pain in the ass. 

Faith: Getting in deeper with Hammond. They make out backstage, she knows it’s wrong, but she can’t resist. And when she overhears another girl flirting with him, it’s heartbreaking. After opening night, she tells him she knows he’s engaged, and that she wants to be with him openly. He waffles, so she turns and walks away. On closing night, he asks her to be his date for a party at his frat. Suzanna, the fiancée, will be bound to hear about this…except Hammond never shows. He calls and pleads work — he’s interning at the local TV station — which Faith doesn’t believe.

In fact, Suzanna had shown up unannounced. But the following night, he is at work (luckily for Lauren). He’s conflicted about choosing between Suzanna and Faith. Sounds to me like Faith is the kind of girl guys like him fool around with, and Suzanna is the kind they marry. But we’ll see. 

So that’s where we are. Faith, I don’t have much to say about; she’s mostly running in place. Winnie keeps telling herself to get her act together, instead of actually doing anything about it. I think the author(s?) don’t know if she’s supposed to be a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, or a true borderline personality. We’re told that KC is a good student because she works at it. Winnie has more native intelligence, but her work ethic is…scattershot, that’s a tactful way of putting it.

KC is grouchy while doing her mail-delivery job (someone calls her “O, unfriendly mail lady”). It’s a good thing we’re told over and over how drop-dead gorgeous she is, because there’s no other reason why anyone would want to get to know her. Interestingly, she admits to Garth Sr. that her parents own/manage a vegetarian restaurant, when she’s usually ashamed (argh!) to tell anyone that. 

And Lauren is slowly transforming. She confronts KC about dropping a dime on the protest. No retribution, just letting her know it was not cool, and, without stating it, that she’s no longer intimidated. Vintage clothing suits her better than Ivy League woolens, and although her contribution to the potluck is expensive truffles, she puts them on a plate and ditches the box. Baby steps! And at the end, she and Dash have a hug that’s not entirely just-friends. 

Still an A-minus. I like the character development in KC and in Lauren. KC is not the nicest person, but the author shows what makes her tick (unlike Campus Fever, in which, with one exception, a bitch is a bitch and can never be redeemed). Winnie makes me cringe a bit, but I like the storylines with KC’s business project, Faith’s theater work, and of course, Lauren trying to establish herself as a writer!

KC is the only one telling lies in this. IIRC, the titles were not always indicators of the storyline.

Now we’re starting to see some growth. Or at least the seeds of it.

KC really does not like guys coming on to her. The first chapter has her going almost full Medea on a guy who’s just trying to introduce himself: “SO BUZZ OFF, BUZZ!” and later, blowing up at a guy over a near-fenderbender that was largely her fault. Girl’s got issues!

And so does Lauren. She’s still going to join Tri Beta because she doesn’t know what else to do. Naturally, Marielle gets assigned as her Big Sister, to take her through rush. Lauren takes the other girls to the Blue Whale restaurant (fine dining, if you can’t tell by the name) in her BMW, which she lets KC drive. which immediately leads to a close call with a vintage Corvette (and its arrogant driver; more on him later). And that doesn’t stop Lauren from extending the offer for KC to borrow the BMW to go job hunting, and to cancel the debt for the dress KC charged in the last installment!

So what does Lauren have to offer besides money and material things? Well, her writing. She takes an essay she wrote to the office of the U of S Weekly Journal, where she meets Dash Ramirez, assistant editor. Unshaven, chain-smoking, bandana-and-ancient-t-shirt wearing…and unimpressed by Lauren or her essay. But she insists, so he assigns her a piece on Dorm Life. “Three hundred words. Typed. Double-spaced. No globs of whiteout bigger than a cockroach.”

She’s got a week and a bit to work in this, so she interviews the Tri Beta pledges, and everyone in her dorm. And she’s terrible at interviewing, so no one has anything interesting to say…but they do appreciate the incentives: free pizza and small gifts like nail polishes. Then, while she’s struggling to write something, she overhears some other girls talking about her. The interviews put them on the spot. “I just sat there eating her pizza!” The thank-you notes (!) were over the top. Sure, she’s nice, but jeez. So Lauren goes back and pounds out a cri de coeur about how dorm life makes her feel so alone. Back to the Weekly office, where Dash finds it acceptable (and since old habits die hard, she almost gives him her expensive pen), and it looks like she’ll be back there again.

Not much happening with Winnie, so I’ll get that out of the way. She’s trying to get back on track with Melissa, but Melissa doesn’t eat pizza when she’s in training and doesn’t make small talk when she’s studying. She’s dropped two classes without signing up for anything else, and the administrator is not impressed by her “life will work itself out” philosophy. (Also, while she’s in his office, she’s fiddling with her fishnet bag, which has plastic doodads sewn onto it. Like much about Winnie, it’s quirky for the sake of it, and utterly impractical.)

She and Josh are talking again, and they have a late night at the Zero Bagel, which causes her to nod off in Russian History. So the next time Josh wants to hang out, she tells him, truthfully, that she has to study. Good going, I say; keep him interested!

Faith is immersed in the theater department. Not a whole lot of technical detail, but she’s organized, pays attention, and is not afraid to go up on the catwalk. Hammond comes to her in a panic: a TV reporter is coming to rehearsal the next night, so they have to pull an all-nighter to get ready. Naturally, this lets down a lot of barriers. Not that night, but a couple nights later, they go to a tavern. Beer for Hammond, who is legal; wine for Faith, who doesn’t like it much, but I wouldn’t blame the wine for the fact that once they get in his car, they start kissing passionately.

So what’s wrong with that? Well, Christopher has a girlfriend at another school. They may be engaged, depending on who you ask. KC and Brooks found out about this first: Brooks told Faith, defiantly, but the heart wants what it wants.

And what of KC? On the first day of Intro to Business, the class has to form into groups to do research. The driver of the ‘Vette is in this class too. His name is Steven Garth, he’s the heir to Garth Petroleum, and he pays off another student to switch groups so he can be in KC’s group. “Capitalism in action,” he calls it. KC can’t let him have the last word, so she suggests, instead of just doing research, why not start a one-time-only small business?

Soccer shirts is what she comes up with. There’s an all-dorm intramural soccer league, but they’re so new they don’t have uniforms. KC and Steven go to a clothing factory, do some negotiating, and they’ve got a deal to get so many jerseys made, with a discount, and so forth…and of course, this leads to them hugging and not squabbling.

Which is good, but what’s a lot less good is what happens when KC opens a business account at the local bank. They offer her a credit card. Oh lordy. Banks and credit companies really did a full-court press on my generation; they were setting up booths in spring-break towns, for heaven’s sake. KC is as susceptible as anyone else. Maybe more so: when they hand her the card with “Kahia Cayanne Angeletti” on it, she feels proud of her name for the first time. Right: because now she has buying power.

And of course she abuses it. First she buys a blazer that’s just under the $200 limit. Then she sees a pair of shoes, without which the blazer just won’t work, yanno? Then she snaps up a bunch of accessories and office supplies, and the charges go through at the store, but of course, when she goes to deposit the soccer-jersey payments, she’s told she’s over the limit on the card, and has to set up a payment plan.

And who should overhear this but Courtney Conner (remember, the president of Tri Beta). She still wants to be on good terms with KC, and offers the helpful advice that if she pays it off right away, they’ll raise her credit limit. So, not wanting to lose face in front of Courtney, KC pays off the card…with the cash that was supposed to go into the business account. Fraud and embezzlement! Guess that’s what’s really important to learn when you’re a business major.

Oh, and there’s another penny to drop. See, Steven thought that KC was the owner of the BMW, and that her finances were on that level. They’re at the Blue Whale, and KC is already sitting on a tack because of her guilty conscience, when Lauren rolls up. She’s going to have to ask for her car back, since KC was only supposed to use it for job hunting. KC runs out, humiliated, and when Steven catches up with her the next day, he wants answers, she gets defensive, and it ends in passionate kissing.

So, pretty good so far. The characters’ storylines intertwine realistically: KC gets the soccer-jersey idea from Winnie, who is talking to distract Faith from thoughts of Brooks; after Faith’s all-nighter, she crashes in KC’s quiet dorm instead of her own noisy one, and for some reason Brooks comes in. I will say, I don’t think Lauren’s article sounds publication-worthy: the topic was dorm life, not her life. But I like other details, like the handwritten sign on the vending machine that says “poison” in one handwriting and “lighten up” in another, and Melissa typing on an “old” manual typewriter. Also Winnie thinking of Melissa as a brick wall and herself as a Christmas ornament: not a bad analogy. And this being a continuing story, KC still owes that money! And Lauren won’t help her out, so we’ll see in the next installment how KC deals with it.

One more thing. This edition has a sneak preview of Horror High #1: Mr. Popularity. Goodreads tells me this was an eight-book series, probably meant to have a limited run, since the last book is called Final Curtain. But when I first searched for it, another series with the same name came up, by Caroline B. Cooney. (Any relation to Linda A? I can’t find anything by Googling or Wiki-ing.)

Overall, I would give this an A minus. I like that it’s an ensemble piece, showing multiple POVs in the same book. Of course, that means it has to be extra-long, the way the pilot episode of a TV show is often as long as a movie! But the characters are well-drawn, not flat, and the settings (rooms, scenery, etc.) are much more vivid than they are in Roommates or Campus Fever. Unlike the other series, where things didn’t get really interesting until book 2, this one grabbed me right away.

Welcome to University of Springfield, in Western Springs, Colorado, a suburb of Boulder. (Not Seattle, as one reviewer mistakenly thought!)

So it starts with a flashback to the summer between high school and college. We get our three main characters.

Winnie Gottlieb: the free spirit. We get it; we GET IT. Funny: I find her to be the least interesting. She was raised by a psychiatrist single mom, who is permissive, but Winnie has never taken advantage of that. She’s not wild, just quirky, and when you get down to it, not as much of a free spirit as she appears to be. She’s short, with a toned figure and short, spiky dark hair.

KC (Kahia Cayenne) Angeletti: business major rebelling against her hippie parents. She’s somewhat tall, with long, curly dark hair, and her dazzling beauty is often commented on. She’s practical, which is sometimes a good thing; she solved the crisis when Winnie got to campus and found she didn’t have a dorm room because she’d spaced sending in her deposit. But she also pretended not to be in when the others came by wanting to go out for pizza. And she didn’t put up any decorations in her dorm room. (Although it wouldn’t surprise me if one thing she did bring was her much-read and highlighted copies of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged!) She says flat out that she doesn’t want college to be an extension of high school. I have to say, I don’t disapprove of that stance. Especially when she recalls how in her senior year, she blew off an interview with another college (and blew her chance to get in) because Winnie was having a crisis. Can’t keep doing that! Right now, she’s close to being Randian, but she’ll soften up as the series goes on. For one thing, she’s going to join a sorority so she can make business contacts, and how can she do that without also making social contacts? 

Faith Crowley: the mom of the group. Theater major, but she wants to work behind the scenes. Which I like. I-have-to-act/sing/dance-or-I’ll-die gets old, and it’s nice to see some appreciation for the crew. If it wasn’t for the crew, actors would be standing in darkness on an empty stage. She’s earnest, sincere, and a lot of positive things, but there will be times when she has to grow a spine. She has long blonde hair, which she usually wears in a braid. Overalls are her default outfit, to further the cute farmgirl image, but they are practical to wear when working backstage!

This being the first installment, it’s mostly world-building and character establishment. Not much plot, just stuff that happens during orientation week. So we get the lay of the land: The Beanery, where KC works (briefly), Mill Pond (so called because it used to be just that, before this was a campus), and Luigi’s Pizza. We also meet a lot of supporting and background characters. Such as:

Brooks Baldwin: Faith’s boyfriend since early high school. He’s an athlete, and yes, he and Faith are not going to last long. He’s a bit overwhelmed by the campus and the teeming student body, but his hickishness is not exaggerated or played for laughs.

KC has a single, but Faith’s roommate is Lauren Turnbell-Smythe. Poor little rich girl, with an overbearing mother and a weight problem, but she’ll have an arc not unlike Peggy’s, on Mad Men. I like her a lot. Oh, and one of the ways we know she’s rolling in money is, she comes equipped with a computer and a CD player! No joke: that was serious hardware in 1990. She also has a TV and a microwave oven, but I had more than one classmate who brought those things to campus. Just that theirs were castoffs or bought at a thrift store, while Lauren’s are undoubtedly brand-new.

Winnie’s roommate is Melissa McDormand, an athlete on scholarship, which is the only way she can afford college. And we meet Kimberly Dayton, a dance major in Faith’s dorm, Freya, an opera singer from Germany, and Dante, another theater major. Kimberly will be a POV character, but Freya and Dante are always in the background; indicators of what’s happening. In the theater department, there’s Meredeth (does he have a last name?). Christopher Hammond, a junior, stunningly handsome, student director, officer in Omega Delta Tau. IOW, Mr. Wonderful.

And Winnie meets Josh Gaffney! Hair flopping in his eyes, beat-up jeans, twine bracelet and an earring. Mr. Grunge! Well, almost: he needs a goatee. He’s playing Frisbee (should be Hacky-Sack), and is majoring in computer science. And he’d like to take a year off and hack around the country on a motorcycle. Foreshadowing! Winnie knows “a lot of people are interested in computers”. Lauren has one; of course she’s the only character besides Josh who does, because back then, one had to be either super-rich, or a byte-head. Which Winnie can’t believe Josh is: he looks more like a musician or a poet.

So, what happens in this installment? Well, KC gets a job on the first day: waitressing at the Beanery. It’ll be easy, because she spent years working in her parents’ cafe. Faith goes over to the theater department, and one of the first signs of friction between her and Brooks is when his map-reading almost fails to get them there. After much pother, she gets chosen to be Hammond’s assistant on Stop the World, I Want to Get Off, which means she’ll be in his pocket a lot.

Tri Beta, the top sorority on campus, will be a major player. KC wants to pledge, and Lauren has to. Her mom was in Tri Beta a generation ago, so Lauren has to be a Tri Beta, “or else”. We’ll find out or-else what down the line. Courtney Conner is the president, Marielle Danner is some kind of officer, and they’re both well-rounded characters. Courtney is pretty much perfect, but pays a high price for it, as we’ll find out later. Marielle is a good antagonist. A senator’s daughter from Texas, so she has a drawl, not a twang. There’s a good scene where she’s interviewing Lauren, who doesn’t know who or what she is, so you can imagine how well it goes. I love this quote: “Marielle touched the corners of her mouth, as if she had just eaten something slightly messy.” This after she flat out tells Lauren that Courtney had to talk her out of downvoting her.

It goes downhill from there, of course. Even Courtney disparages Lauren’s appearance, and tells KC it would be in Lauren’s best interest if she dropped out before she’s squeezed out. Mark Geisslinger (Marielle’s SO, and he’s a piece of work too) sets her up with Hammond (I am not typing “Christopher” over and over, sorry) for the “Trash Your Roommate” prank. Hammond is a gentleman about it, but Lauren is still humiliated. And furious with KC when she figures out KC knew but didn’t tell her.

And KC feels terrible about that, but her pledge status hung in the balance. Which makes her question certain things: is it fair that people give her breaks just because she’s a classic beauty? Is she a good person inside? Is social climbing worth it, if it hurts decent people? Especially when said decent person, Lauren, let KC charge a semi-formal outfit to her own credit card, and lets KC borrow her BMW? When Mark and Marielle come in to the Beanery and start throwing their weight around, KC balances her karma by dumping their milkshake and coffee on them. Which ends not only her pledge tenure with Tri Beta, but also her job at the Beanery. (This  is the start of a long line of jobs that KC either quits, or loses, or that were only temporary, or that just don’t get mentioned again.)

Meanwhile, what of Winnie? Well, she goes to a toga party, drinks straight rum, goes to Josh’s room and wakes up the next morning not knowing what happened. What did happen was, she peacefully zonked out before anything else could happen. And IYAM, she’s lucky it wasn’t a matter of passing out before she could *stop* something from happening that she didn’t want to. (See Roommates #1 and #10.) But if anything had happened, it would not have been her first time. She gave her v-chip to a guy named Travis, another American in Paris, after “too much wine”. In this case, though, the next morning, Winnie puts on an act, first to the other girls, then to Josh, like she’s a woman-of-the-world and had the most fantastic time the night before. Excruciating to read about, and no one is fooled. 

(I can’t recall alcohol ever coming into play without something negative happening. Not always bad-bad, but never a harmless good time. And not even a mention of pot smoking, even with characters who are otherwise firmly in the weed demographic. Also, I’m pretty sure nobody smokes. Which is completely unrealistic for the time period. I shudder now to think how dense the air was on my college campus.)

And then there’s the matter of Winnie being pretty much the roommate you hope you don’t get stuck with. She’s a slob. She comes in late, or so late it’s early, and makes noise. She took Melissa’s top sheet to make Faith a toga for the party! It takes a while before we actually meet Melissa, and we get her POV before she and Winnie interact. She’s understandably fed up with Winnie’s nonsense, and Winnie is humbled for perhaps the first time in her life. (She really should have told Winnie what the reader is told: because Melissa is on athletic scholarship, she “literally couldn’t afford to do anything but her best.”)

And Faith has decided that she and Brooks will have *their* first time. Which I find astounding, that they’ve been together for years and have never consummated, not even on prom night, or after graduation, or just because they wanted to. It’s even less plausible than Sam and Jonathan, in Roommates. And it still doesn’t happen, because as soon as they’re alone together, it sinks in to Faith that it’s already too late. They’re behind the curve as it is, and they’ll never mature and gain experience and everything one is supposed to do in college, if they’re still bound by a high-school relationship. So what was supposed to be a night of romance becomes a breakup. However, the end of their relationship will not be the end of Brooks as a character. Stay tuned.

This is an interesting way to cover the high-school-sweethearts-break-up-in-the-first-month-of-college issue. Faith doesn’t have to call Brooks in another time zone and be told “He’s out with his girlfriend.” They were growing apart on the same campus, so it’s better that she initiates the breakup, to rip off the band-aid.  

And that’s where we are: Faith and Brooks are no more, but Faith will have all she can handle in the theater department. KC has no job and no sorority. Lauren is stuck pledging a sorority she doesn’t want to be in, and that doesn’t truly want her (just her mother’s alumni donations). Winnie is stuck living in the same dorm as Josh, which is going to be super awkward, and she hopes she can clean up her act enough to mend fences with Melissa. And classes start tomorrow!

Also, when I bought this, it was shrink-wrapped, because it came with a card, the size of a credit card, that had a mood-ring kind of spot on it. Press it and it changed color to indicate your mood. I kept it for a while, but it’s probably in a landfill now.