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Wanted: Date For Saturday Night
Fifteen-year-old Julie, worried that she may be the only freshman without a date for the freshman formal, decides to impress everyone by appearing at the dance escorted by a handsome college student.
- GenresYoung Adult
152 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
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44 people want to read
About the author
Janet Quin-Harkin
128 books75 followersJanet Quin-Harkin is a pseudonym of Rhys Bowen
Rhys turned to writing children’s books under her married name, Janet Quin-Harkin. Her first picture book was an immediate success and won several awards. More picture books followed, then her agent asked her to write a book for young adults. This was a turning point in Rhys’s career. Her first young adult novel was an instant hit. By her third she was selling half a million copies. Many more popular YA novels followed until Rhys decided she had said all she wanted to say about teenage love and angst, and she turned her real love—mysteries.
Rhys turned to writing children’s books under her married name, Janet Quin-Harkin. Her first picture book was an immediate success and won several awards. More picture books followed, then her agent asked her to write a book for young adults. This was a turning point in Rhys’s career. Her first young adult novel was an instant hit. By her third she was selling half a million copies. Many more popular YA novels followed until Rhys decided she had said all she wanted to say about teenage love and angst, and she turned her real love—mysteries.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 7 reviews
September 25, 2009
Cute, vintage 80's teen novel. The type of book that could never be published today. I miss this America!
April 17, 2022
Wanted Date For Saturday Night
Plot: Julie Klein vents to her best friend Gerry about the upcoming Freshman Formal Because a popular girl named Caroline says that if you don’t go you’re a loser, it’s gotten in Julie’s head that she *has* to go with a date. The problem is that the boys Julie has “dated” are all .. lackluster and she wants a dream guy. Gerry doesn’t seem to have this issue. All the hot guys chase her so it's practically a given that she’ll have a date by then. Gerry teases her (when she sees a newspaper) that maybe she should take out an ad. Julie says she’s not that desperate, but she *can* understand why people would want to use ads.
While walking home with Gerry and talking about her fantasy guy, Julie sees a store with unicorns and dragons in the window. The store is called Pure Fantasy and it’s filled with mystical items. Julie loves it! The store owner is giving out free posters to the first one hundred customers. When Julie opens the poster the knight in the poster looks just like the guy in her dreams-dark hair, gray eyes. While thinking of “Damien Dragonslayer” her Dungeons and Dragon hero and doodling dragons in class, she discovers she has a bond with a boy that says he can imagine himself a dragon slayer way back when (Phillip). He gets a little embarrassed. At home, Julie’s mom tells her (her) cousin Danny is going to be paying them a visit. He goes to Yale and she wants Julie to show him around. Julie thinks about how Danny use to be a geek that was always into bugs. She’s not looking forward to it. She tries to get Gerry to come with them, but she says she has to go shopping for her date with Grant. Julie wonders why it is that whenever Gerry wants to do something she’ll drop everything, but Gerry always seems to be busy when she asks to do something. Predictably, Danny turns out HOT! Danny isn’t even into science -and bugs-now. He's more so into medicine.
Looking at Danny the next day, Julie wonders if Phillip’s looks will go through a change one day. She takes Danny sightseeing and he tells her what made him grow out of his bug phase. . He’s also noticed she’s changed. He says she resembles a famous model and if they weren’t cousins. For a while, they just bum around the city. Danny seems to like New York and says when he’s a famous heart surgeon he’ll get an office overlooking the park. He asks Julie what she wants to do and she says she hasn’t found her passion. And as for guys well she’s in love with someone that doesn’t exist. Danny treats Julie to a candlelight dinner During the dinner he teases her about a boyfriend and again she says she doesn’t have one. He says that all she needs is confidence (and that will come). It starts to rain on the way out, and Caroline (and her crew) notice her (stunning expressions) as Danny escorts her into a taxi.
At school, Gerry says her plants with the guy she ditched Julie to shop for didn’t go so well. She vents that all the high school boys are immature and the mature guys all they want is sex. Julie (not listening) again complains that Gerry doesn’t have anything to complain about because at least she can get a guy. Gerry apologizes for not being there. Caroline and her crew come in the bathroom and start hounding Julie about Danny. Caroline pressures her to invite Danny at the Freshman Formal and to her party afterward. She also invites Julie to have lunch with them and she does. (More talk about Danny). Julie and Phillip are picked to make posters for the dance, but later one of Caroline’s friends warns Julie not to get close to Phillip because Caroline use to have a crush on him, but he turned her down for a dance and she never got over it.
Julie experiments with makeup and clothes to look like the model Danny says she did. Gerry invites her to see a Terry Gilbert concert and she thinks it’ll just be the two of them, Caroline invites her to a concert two, and she considers backing out (like Gerry always does her) but she decides not to. Only she finds out the date isn’t just them. It’s an attempt to hook her up with Phillip. Only all during the concert, she’s pissed and keeps comparing Phillip to Danny. Julie and Gerry get into it about how rude she treated Phillip and Julie tells Gerry she doesn’t need her to find a date for the dance. She’s already got a guy in college and she’s found her crowd with more MATURE people. Gerry tells then she doesn’t have to worry about her interfering and she can’t wait to meet these *mature* friends at the dance. They make up the next day with the condition that Gerry will stay out of it. Caroline and her crew and Julie hang after school. More Danny talk. More dance talk. The only thing is Danny says he can’t come to the dance because he has finals.
Gerry tries to warn Julie that Caroline will only use her then drop her, but Julie accuses her of being jealous and calls their friendship off. Julie visits a college campus nearby and decides after seeing a message board maybe she is desperate enough to put out an ad for a date. So she does. Julie gets a call from someone answering the ad. They agree to meet under the clock at the train station and wear flowers. Only when Julie sees the guy he looks like he’s in his 30s so she turns and flees. She gets another call from a guy named Steve that invites her out that night. He’s new in town and wants to meet some fun girls. Julie is hesitant but he says that if she doesn’t want to she doesn’t have to go through with the party. When he comes to get her and she answers the door, he has the face of the guy in her dreams. The date goes great! Steve is an amazing conversationlist. Julie is excited because she thinks she’ll get her first kiss. After a while, they leave (she has a midnight curfew) but instead of going to her house he goes to his to “get a pair of gloves it’s freezing”. He starts coming on to Julie aggressively once inside until she tells him she’s only fifteen and confesses what she did. He looks at her like she’s crazy because what she did was insane. Anyone else would have taken advantage of her. But when he drops her off, he says he’ll go to the dance with her. Only Julie finally realizes Steve was just her look-alike knight fantasy.
Julie decides not to go to the dance. She and Gerry get into another fight and accuse each other of being scared (Julie of being scared to face realty and date a normal guy and Gerry of being scared to commit) but they make up shortly after. Gerry has a new boyfriend again but she says she might dump him. Julie says she wishes she’d find someone and stuck with them and Gerry says she will when she finds the right one. Gerry also didn’t believe that Julie went out with a college guy. Just like how she didn’t believe Julie hung out with Caroline (until she saw them). Julie finds out Caroline was just trying to use her to invite Danny so she could “borrow him” to make Russ jealous (because he always had girls hanging over him and she couldn’t tell him how upset it made her). Julie cancels their “friendship”. Julie gets a job at Pure Fantasy where *surprise* Phillips's mother is the owner. He and Julie by the end of the book are going to a fantasy convention. They all realize as they set up for the dance (neither who are going) that they’re having more fun that the ones there (because they’ve just gone for show). Devone (one of the popular girls) surprises Gerry by mentioning she was surprised that Julie didn’t bring the hot guy from the club who looked even better than the one from NY.
My Thoughts: When I first reviewed this book, there were some things that stuck out. There was the before it’s time message of how you shouldn’t take risks with meeting people throw ads (now it’s on the internet) because you never know who they’ll *really* turn out to be. Just in the case with Steve. Steve could have easily raped Julie (not that this pre-teen book club would have taken it that far). But it did a good job of bringing in that message. I remember when my cousin was younger she’d pretend to be older on pages with older guys. She was even younger than Julie (maybe ten or eleven). I’d always try to shut her pages down because I feared that she’d get involved with something she wasn’t ready for. I’ve even tried on the sly that I’d meet online and guess what? It never went right because none of them were what they pretended to be. And then Julie's mother gets a FAIL. Why would you let your 15-year-old daughter go out with some guy she tells you she's known for a while that you've never even met? This NEVER would been my mother. Just like Julie, I'm an only child. When I dated at fifteen my mother actually meet the boy's PARENTS. So if something would have happened to Julie in Steve's apartment it would have been just as much the mother's fault. Another good message was something that I also have done. When I was in high school, I had a “Phillip” and I looked all over him because I thought I wanted something better. I’m glad that Julie learned that the best ones are the ones you have something in common with. The ones that usually look the best turn out to be about absolutely NOTHING in the long run. It’s the ones you don’t think you want that give you the most loyalty down the line. Sometimes you just can’t always see that when you're in high school. I also like Julie tend to build up the fantasy so extreme in my head that nothing else lives up to that. There was also the message about how you REALLY need to be wary of people that take interest in you that haven’t before. That’s why even today social media just… If I knew you in high school and I don’t remember saying two words to you *then* why would you be so interested in “friending” me so you can check in to what I’m doing today. Half those people are NOT friends. Just like Julie learned Caroline was NOT her friend. The verdict is even out if Gerry was her “friend”. She made some *very* interesting points about how Gerry only hung out with her when it was convenient. And Caroline reminded me of this girl from college who when she calls the conversation is all about her. She might ask you a question but then you get the sense she’s only half-listening to your answer because she’s right back on whatever her issue is (and it’s ALWAYS an issue). But then I noticed something that I didn’t quite notice before and struck me as DISTURBING! Julie was so into having the perfect guy that she makes Danny the perfect guy and that to me was like NOO! When he has her close to him in the rain she wishes they could stay that way! IT'S YOUR COUSIN! I have a cousin that’s about my age and we go places and people tend to think we’re *together* like that and I betcho you would NOT catch me sitting up fantasizing and comparing other guys to him! I love my cousin but that just weirds me out how people always tend to assume and talk to us like we're married. I just could not believe how OBSESSED Julie acted with Danny in this! SOOO many times she seems to forget that HES FAMILY and I thought that made her a little bit pathetic. I get it. It’s hard sometimes to be single but just NOO! You do NOT form an attachment lusting after your COUSIN! This was so strong in this book the taste of incest that it practically suffocates you and just leaves you with a uncomfortable feeling that's just WRONG for a pre-teen book.
Rating: 8 There were some good lessons in this to be an older book!.
Plot: Julie Klein vents to her best friend Gerry about the upcoming Freshman Formal Because a popular girl named Caroline says that if you don’t go you’re a loser, it’s gotten in Julie’s head that she *has* to go with a date. The problem is that the boys Julie has “dated” are all .. lackluster and she wants a dream guy. Gerry doesn’t seem to have this issue. All the hot guys chase her so it's practically a given that she’ll have a date by then. Gerry teases her (when she sees a newspaper) that maybe she should take out an ad. Julie says she’s not that desperate, but she *can* understand why people would want to use ads.
While walking home with Gerry and talking about her fantasy guy, Julie sees a store with unicorns and dragons in the window. The store is called Pure Fantasy and it’s filled with mystical items. Julie loves it! The store owner is giving out free posters to the first one hundred customers. When Julie opens the poster the knight in the poster looks just like the guy in her dreams-dark hair, gray eyes. While thinking of “Damien Dragonslayer” her Dungeons and Dragon hero and doodling dragons in class, she discovers she has a bond with a boy that says he can imagine himself a dragon slayer way back when (Phillip). He gets a little embarrassed. At home, Julie’s mom tells her (her) cousin Danny is going to be paying them a visit. He goes to Yale and she wants Julie to show him around. Julie thinks about how Danny use to be a geek that was always into bugs. She’s not looking forward to it. She tries to get Gerry to come with them, but she says she has to go shopping for her date with Grant. Julie wonders why it is that whenever Gerry wants to do something she’ll drop everything, but Gerry always seems to be busy when she asks to do something. Predictably, Danny turns out HOT! Danny isn’t even into science -and bugs-now. He's more so into medicine.
Looking at Danny the next day, Julie wonders if Phillip’s looks will go through a change one day. She takes Danny sightseeing and he tells her what made him grow out of his bug phase. . He’s also noticed she’s changed. He says she resembles a famous model and if they weren’t cousins. For a while, they just bum around the city. Danny seems to like New York and says when he’s a famous heart surgeon he’ll get an office overlooking the park. He asks Julie what she wants to do and she says she hasn’t found her passion. And as for guys well she’s in love with someone that doesn’t exist. Danny treats Julie to a candlelight dinner During the dinner he teases her about a boyfriend and again she says she doesn’t have one. He says that all she needs is confidence (and that will come). It starts to rain on the way out, and Caroline (and her crew) notice her (stunning expressions) as Danny escorts her into a taxi.
At school, Gerry says her plants with the guy she ditched Julie to shop for didn’t go so well. She vents that all the high school boys are immature and the mature guys all they want is sex. Julie (not listening) again complains that Gerry doesn’t have anything to complain about because at least she can get a guy. Gerry apologizes for not being there. Caroline and her crew come in the bathroom and start hounding Julie about Danny. Caroline pressures her to invite Danny at the Freshman Formal and to her party afterward. She also invites Julie to have lunch with them and she does. (More talk about Danny). Julie and Phillip are picked to make posters for the dance, but later one of Caroline’s friends warns Julie not to get close to Phillip because Caroline use to have a crush on him, but he turned her down for a dance and she never got over it.
Julie experiments with makeup and clothes to look like the model Danny says she did. Gerry invites her to see a Terry Gilbert concert and she thinks it’ll just be the two of them, Caroline invites her to a concert two, and she considers backing out (like Gerry always does her) but she decides not to. Only she finds out the date isn’t just them. It’s an attempt to hook her up with Phillip. Only all during the concert, she’s pissed and keeps comparing Phillip to Danny. Julie and Gerry get into it about how rude she treated Phillip and Julie tells Gerry she doesn’t need her to find a date for the dance. She’s already got a guy in college and she’s found her crowd with more MATURE people. Gerry tells then she doesn’t have to worry about her interfering and she can’t wait to meet these *mature* friends at the dance. They make up the next day with the condition that Gerry will stay out of it. Caroline and her crew and Julie hang after school. More Danny talk. More dance talk. The only thing is Danny says he can’t come to the dance because he has finals.
Gerry tries to warn Julie that Caroline will only use her then drop her, but Julie accuses her of being jealous and calls their friendship off. Julie visits a college campus nearby and decides after seeing a message board maybe she is desperate enough to put out an ad for a date. So she does. Julie gets a call from someone answering the ad. They agree to meet under the clock at the train station and wear flowers. Only when Julie sees the guy he looks like he’s in his 30s so she turns and flees. She gets another call from a guy named Steve that invites her out that night. He’s new in town and wants to meet some fun girls. Julie is hesitant but he says that if she doesn’t want to she doesn’t have to go through with the party. When he comes to get her and she answers the door, he has the face of the guy in her dreams. The date goes great! Steve is an amazing conversationlist. Julie is excited because she thinks she’ll get her first kiss. After a while, they leave (she has a midnight curfew) but instead of going to her house he goes to his to “get a pair of gloves it’s freezing”. He starts coming on to Julie aggressively once inside until she tells him she’s only fifteen and confesses what she did. He looks at her like she’s crazy because what she did was insane. Anyone else would have taken advantage of her. But when he drops her off, he says he’ll go to the dance with her. Only Julie finally realizes Steve was just her look-alike knight fantasy.
Julie decides not to go to the dance. She and Gerry get into another fight and accuse each other of being scared (Julie of being scared to face realty and date a normal guy and Gerry of being scared to commit) but they make up shortly after. Gerry has a new boyfriend again but she says she might dump him. Julie says she wishes she’d find someone and stuck with them and Gerry says she will when she finds the right one. Gerry also didn’t believe that Julie went out with a college guy. Just like how she didn’t believe Julie hung out with Caroline (until she saw them). Julie finds out Caroline was just trying to use her to invite Danny so she could “borrow him” to make Russ jealous (because he always had girls hanging over him and she couldn’t tell him how upset it made her). Julie cancels their “friendship”. Julie gets a job at Pure Fantasy where *surprise* Phillips's mother is the owner. He and Julie by the end of the book are going to a fantasy convention. They all realize as they set up for the dance (neither who are going) that they’re having more fun that the ones there (because they’ve just gone for show). Devone (one of the popular girls) surprises Gerry by mentioning she was surprised that Julie didn’t bring the hot guy from the club who looked even better than the one from NY.
My Thoughts: When I first reviewed this book, there were some things that stuck out. There was the before it’s time message of how you shouldn’t take risks with meeting people throw ads (now it’s on the internet) because you never know who they’ll *really* turn out to be. Just in the case with Steve. Steve could have easily raped Julie (not that this pre-teen book club would have taken it that far). But it did a good job of bringing in that message. I remember when my cousin was younger she’d pretend to be older on pages with older guys. She was even younger than Julie (maybe ten or eleven). I’d always try to shut her pages down because I feared that she’d get involved with something she wasn’t ready for. I’ve even tried on the sly that I’d meet online and guess what? It never went right because none of them were what they pretended to be. And then Julie's mother gets a FAIL. Why would you let your 15-year-old daughter go out with some guy she tells you she's known for a while that you've never even met? This NEVER would been my mother. Just like Julie, I'm an only child. When I dated at fifteen my mother actually meet the boy's PARENTS. So if something would have happened to Julie in Steve's apartment it would have been just as much the mother's fault. Another good message was something that I also have done. When I was in high school, I had a “Phillip” and I looked all over him because I thought I wanted something better. I’m glad that Julie learned that the best ones are the ones you have something in common with. The ones that usually look the best turn out to be about absolutely NOTHING in the long run. It’s the ones you don’t think you want that give you the most loyalty down the line. Sometimes you just can’t always see that when you're in high school. I also like Julie tend to build up the fantasy so extreme in my head that nothing else lives up to that. There was also the message about how you REALLY need to be wary of people that take interest in you that haven’t before. That’s why even today social media just… If I knew you in high school and I don’t remember saying two words to you *then* why would you be so interested in “friending” me so you can check in to what I’m doing today. Half those people are NOT friends. Just like Julie learned Caroline was NOT her friend. The verdict is even out if Gerry was her “friend”. She made some *very* interesting points about how Gerry only hung out with her when it was convenient. And Caroline reminded me of this girl from college who when she calls the conversation is all about her. She might ask you a question but then you get the sense she’s only half-listening to your answer because she’s right back on whatever her issue is (and it’s ALWAYS an issue). But then I noticed something that I didn’t quite notice before and struck me as DISTURBING! Julie was so into having the perfect guy that she makes Danny the perfect guy and that to me was like NOO! When he has her close to him in the rain she wishes they could stay that way! IT'S YOUR COUSIN! I have a cousin that’s about my age and we go places and people tend to think we’re *together* like that and I betcho you would NOT catch me sitting up fantasizing and comparing other guys to him! I love my cousin but that just weirds me out how people always tend to assume and talk to us like we're married. I just could not believe how OBSESSED Julie acted with Danny in this! SOOO many times she seems to forget that HES FAMILY and I thought that made her a little bit pathetic. I get it. It’s hard sometimes to be single but just NOO! You do NOT form an attachment lusting after your COUSIN! This was so strong in this book the taste of incest that it practically suffocates you and just leaves you with a uncomfortable feeling that's just WRONG for a pre-teen book.
Rating: 8 There were some good lessons in this to be an older book!.
October 13, 2012
A high school girl finally becomes popular with the in-crowd when she and her college cousin are seen together and mistaken for a couple. How far will Julie go to keep her new image? The words that come to mind are cheesy and unrealistic.
April 26, 2012
Cute little book about a girl who will do almost anything to be popular even if it means discarding her best friend. However I was very pleased with the way the book ended though.
August 11, 2017
Terrifyingly stupid heroine.
October 2, 2024
I really like Janet Quin-Harkin's books, mostly because of the Sweet Dreams series. This one was fun and a bit different. The main character was a bit childish and stupid at times, but that made it a realistic teenage story. There were some entertaining moments and it was quite unpredictable as well. It's definitely a great book for those who enjoy harmless teenage romances.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 7 reviews