The Wishing Year

    In the 1960's Whitman put out a number of stand alone books under the series name A Teen Novel and A Whitman Novel For Girls. It's unclear why there was two different names.

    This is one of the last ones I read and I can't remember anything about it. I vaguely recall a girl being at the beach and then going to a boys house but I really can't remember so this will be like reading a whole new book.

    Cheryl Kramer opens a box of cereal one morning before school and inside finds a wishing ring; a plastic ring you're suppose to make a wish on. Although Cheryl scoffs at "all this junk you get in cereals" she takes it with her to school and decides to make three wishes with it. She wishes to be thinner, to be noticed by her crush, Bill Meyers, and to join a sorority. Like the main character in many books about high school girls in the 1960's, Cheryl believes joining a sorority will change her whole life, bring all her hopes and dreams to reality, and cure all her problems.

    At school she shows the ring to her two best friends and says that once she's done with it she'll pass it around to them to make wishes.

    After school she walks to her grandmothers house for a visit. Her grandmother is very old fashioned and religious. She believes living frugally is important and disapproves of the modernization and continuous growth of their city. 

    Uncle Elmer lives with grandmother and Cheryl is happy to find that he is not home. Cheryl looks down on her uncle because he is an alcoholic. Her family has explained to her that her uncle's drinking is his way to cope with the trauma of surviving the Bataan Death March in WW2 but Cheryl, coldly, does not see that as a valid excuse.

    She heads home late to find neither of her parents there. Dinner preparations have been started but left abandoned. Cherly goes about setting the table and sits down to watch tv to wait but as it grows later and later neither of her parents arrive home and Cheryl finds herself extremely worried and scared. 

    

    Her father finally arrives home to find her in hysterics and the next morning it's explained he had been out the evening with "the boys" unaware that his wife had to drive a pregnant neighbor to the hospital after she went into labor early.

    Later that day Cheryl joins her father on a fishing boat due to the chance of seeing whales. There she meets a friendly and sarcastic boy named Peter who she decides she hates and never wants to see again.

    As sorority rush season starts Cheryl becomes more and more stressed over whether she will receive an invitation to any of the teas and is relieved when she finally gets an invite to the Tri Phi rushing tea thing...or whatever it's called. It's an afternoon tea party for potential new members. It's being held at super rich-girl Patsy Moore's mansion and Cheryl is able to talk her mother into buying her an expensive designer suit to wear to it. 

    Once there she is handed off to Sue, a friendly girl that has the locker next to Cheryl at school. She seems to want to help Cheryl become a member, perhaps only to spite Ethel Barnes. Ethel was one of Cheryl's childhood friends who snubbed her after befriending the popular girls. Ethel is wearing the same suit as Cheryl and clearly not happy about it.

    Even with Sue's help Cheryl struggles to make small talk and feel at ease with the club members until Mrs. Moore takes an interest in her. Cheryl finds Mrs. Moore kind and friendly and helps her relax and make a better impression. Upon leaving Mrs. Moore bids her farewell saying "I look forward to seeing you again" which gives Cheryl the confidence that she'll be accepted.

    The next day is "s-day". The day when the sororities go around to the houses of the girls who have been accepted, give them a special necklace, and then "kidnap" them for a informal initiation ceremony. 

    

    Cheryl anxiously awaits their arrival, eating dinner early, continuously touching up her hair and makeup, and intermittently waiting outside. As the night gets later and no one shows up Cheryl telephones Judy and Alicia, her two best friends, and finds they've both already been picked up by the Tri Phis. Cheryl continues to wait but it becomes clear the girls are not coming and she has not been accepted. She spends the night crying her eyes out and being comforted by her parents who feel helpless to stop her pain.

    School the following day is a mix of overjoyed girls who've been accepted to a sorority or emotional girls who had not made the cut. Cheryl is told by Sue that most of the sorority had wanted to accept her but Ethel Barnes had discouraged them by mentioning Cheryl's uncle is an alcoholic who has been to jail. 

    Cheryl gets a chance to leave school early when many other girls burst into hysterical crying and mother's of the rejected girls are called to take them home. After spending the day running errands with her mom they go to visit Cheryl's 20-year-old cousin Dorothy who is visiting town. 

    Dorothy is beautiful, popular, and belongs to a college sorority. She tells Cheryl that she was rejected from sororities in high school and even in collage at first but the rejection encouraged her to find other interests and activities which helped her become a better person. 

    Her words don't help Cheryl much and she begins isolating herself, spending most her time alone in her room. Her parents are worried and begin considering sending her to another school but Grandmother discourages it. While visiting the family one evening Cheryl overhears her condemning her parents, telling them they've spoiled Cheryl to the point that she can't handle not having things go her way. Grandmother says what Cheryl really needs is a change of attitude and this makes sense to Cheryl who says she is sick and tired of being sick and tired.

    She goes along on an upcoming school outing to the Palisades (This book takes place in Los Angeles, by the way). A cliff has recently had a landslide revealing fossils and the science classes from multiple schools are going to view them, although many kids see it as an excuse for a day at the beach. 

    While there a kid is seen making a dangerous descent from one of the large houses at the top of the cliff. As he gets closer Cheryl feels he looks very familiar and is surprised to find it's Peter from the fishing boat. He recognizes her right away and partners up with her for lunch, much to the surprise of other girls who claim Peter is the son of a wealthy Hollywood director.

    Peter invites her up to his impressive house for a swim and she stays for dinner with him and his mother, his father is currently in Italy for work. Cheryl feels very much at ease with his mother, much like she did with Mrs. Moore. 

    The day helps lifts Cheryl's spirits but as spring break arrives and all the sororities head to the cost to spend the vacation in rented cabins Cheryl again feels sad. But soon she gets an invitation from Peters mother inviting her along with them to their "desert hideaway" in Palm Springs. 

    She is very excited about this because she will be taking the bus there alone. Her fathers worries over how dangerous the Los Angeles bus depo is which intrigues and excites Cheryl all the more. 

    Once in Palm Springs Cheryl is picked up by Peter in a jeep and he drives crazily over the sand dunes and out into the desert where Cheryl finds their desert hideaway truly is a desert hideaway, it's a stone house that has been built among boulders and hard to recognize unless close. 

    After the excitement of the L.A. bus depo fades Cheryl feels glum thinking about other girls enjoying a beach vacation with friends and boys while she's in the desert with Peter who she has no romantic feelings towards whatsoever. However within the next 4 days her feeling about the location change and she finds herself enjoying the beauty of nature and simple fun of their days, partly with the help of Peter's mother who tells her to "make the most of everyday as it comes" which Cheryl finds deep meaning in.

    Once back at school Cheryl appreciates her vacation all the more once Judy and Alicia tell her the pledges had been brought along on the beach vacation to act as servants and maids for the sorority members. Both of them express that they are sick of being treated like dirt by the sorority and would quit if it wouldn't raise a fuss.

    Still in a good mood Cheryl decides to try waking up to watch the sunrise the way they did in the desert and finds this gives her plenty of time the next morning to look presentable for school, something she never normally makes time for. 

    She remains in a good mood until later at school when she sees Ethel Barnes and Bill Meyers hanging all over each other and finds out they began going steady over spring break. She's so upset she runs out of school.

    Her broken heart soon mends when she gets busy helping her mother, who is a model, put on a weekly charm school class for disadvantaged junior high girls. Cheryl sees there are people whose lives are much harder than hers and she makes an effort to be a good example for them which includes being responsible over her appearance. 

    Her mother makes plans for the girls to have a fashion show at a local department store and while there with her mother to pick out the outfits for the show, Cheryl runs into Bill Meyers who is working as a stock boy. She is completely at ease talking to him now that he's not single and available and he finds her amusing and nice to talk to. 

    After the fashion show comes a charm school dance and Cheryl worries about who she can bring as a date that would be a good example for the girls. She doesn't think Peter would make a good example. 

    A few days later he shows up outside of her school in a flashy new car he had received for his recent birthday. He shouts for Cheryl to come join him in celebrating and she gleefully jumps into the car in front of the shocked Ethel Barnes. They have dinner at the county club then run out of gas on a long stretch of road and walk miles in the dark. Cheryl has fun recounting the evening to her friends but insists that Peter doesn't "send her". 

    The next day she goes back to the department store to pick up decorations for the dance and sees Bill Meyers who walks up, says he wants a girl like her and not Ethel, then they begin kissing.

    This ending to the book is very abrupt and very strange. The evening with Peter is less than a page long and the end scene with Bill Meyers is only a few paragraphs and comes out of no where. It's very strange and rushed. Maybe there was more but the book was too long and the end got severely condensed? I have no idea, I'm just confused.

- When Mr. Kramer is described as being younger than most fathers it says Cheryl's friends practice flirting with him which is disturbing.

- When Cheryl accidentally speaks her thoughts out loud to herself she covers her embarrassment by pretending she was talking to a guy passing on the street. That's a pretty confident move in my opinion.

- Cheryl's father is taking her and her friends to the rushing tea but he completely has no regard for whether he gets them there on time and drops them off an hour late. I thought that was incredibly rude.

- Winifred E. Wise was something of a feminist so I'm surprised to see that Cheryl losing weight through starving from depression is portrayed as a good thing.

- The teenage spring breakers are called "Easter bunnies" in this book and also in Wise's other book, Minnow Vail. This makes me assume that's what Wise, who lived on the California coast, and the locals called them in real life.

    I'm not sure how I feel about this book. I do like Wise's writing but I felt like a lot of nothing happens in the book, there's chapters where Cheryl is just at school or at home keeping busy and doing nothing worth noting. I actually liked that because it's different than most books. 

    I felt like Peter could have been in it more and Bill definitely could have. He's the love interest but only appears 4 times and only speaks to Cheryl twice, both times briefly. Even Feeny Chase isn't mentioned enough, Cheryl says she'll be seeing more of her but then she's never mentioned again. 

    Although I enjoyed this book I would say it lacks substance. Also the cover is not from a scene in the book which always irks me but worse than that it isn't of characters in the book either.