Sisters Marian, Ernestine and Beth return in this follow-up to their first adventure, The Graper Girls, which chronicled their home and high-school life in small town Wisconsin. This second volume follows them as they embark upon their college careers at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison. Marian and Ernestine are the first to go, and soon find themselves swept up in the college life - most particularly, in the "Greek" life of the campus sororities and fraternities. Marian, who intends only to attend for two years, before marrying her hometown fiance, Ralph Stevens, becomes a devoted Gamma Delt, taking the idea of having the "proper spirit," and representing her chapter very much to heart. Ernestine, on the other hand, has a more mixed response to life in a sorority, opting not to move into the Gamma Delt house during her freshman and sophomore years, but to stay in the boarding house run by German immigrant Mrs. K. (Kuemmerlein). Beth, in the meantime, spends the first half of the book working toward finishing high school early, in order to join her sisters in Madison.

Like its predecessor, The Graper Girls Go to College is alternately narrated in the first person by the three sisters, each of whom has three chapters told from her perspective. The tone is snappy and the attitude lighthearted, which can be entertaining and irritating by turns. The romantic entanglements of the three Graper sisters is featured as prominently here as in the first book, with the added issues of frat vs. non-frat boys, and the proper dating behavior of (in Marian's case) a young woman who is engaged. I had understood from a friend that the depiction of sorority life in this series is discussed in Shirley Marchalonis' study, College Girls: A Century in Fiction, so I paid particular attention to that issue while reading. While the book at first appears to offer a more nuanced view, with blind and critical acceptance each being represented, in the persons of Marian and Ernestine, in the end the depiction is almost completely positive, with unhappy outsiders mostly finding their way into the fold (often through the efforts of the Graper Girls), and the one critical voice eventually changing her mind about some of her sisters. I'll be interested to read Marchalonis' perspective on all of this, when I finally do get to her study!

All in all, this was quite similar in style and content to the first book, so readers who enjoyed The Graper Girls will want to pick this one up as well. For my part, I enjoyed it a little more than I did the first, finding some of the humor quite entertaining - the roommate issues were hysterical! - and some of the secondary characters, such as the Irish-language loving Professor Lubitsch, appealing. Although I don't think this series is destined to become a favorite, I am engaged enough that I plan to read the next entry, Growing Up with the Grapers, in order to see what those three sisters get up to in New York. ( )