Anne of the Island
Ratings116
Average rating4.2
I can't express how much I love this series!
In this one Anne is a young woman already. The book deals with higher education, making friends, losing friends, and the first trepidations of love. It touches on a number of other subjects as well but is, as the previous two entries in the series, steeped in cosiness, dreams, and simple everyday “magic”.
I loved reading this book and I will remain forever grateful to L.M. Montgomery for writing it!
After thoroughly enjoying the last two, I was pretty disappointed by this one. Let's just say I have mixed feelings about it. There were several things I found charming, but Anne herself frustrated and even horrified me a little. The cat scene, need I say more? Actually, I will - if they had actually killed the cat, I would have put the book down and not picked up another one. Why do most of the characters seem to hate cats?! What did poor Rusty do, besides having the misfortune of liking Anne and being “disreputable looking.” As is, the fact that Anne went along with the cat-murder plot left me feeling betrayed. Oh! And the same goes for Mr. Harrison who killed his dog (twice) simply because he was tired of him. What. The. Hell? Also, her refusal to examine her feelings for Gilbert at first felt adorably naïve and true to life but quickly became tiresome, especially her borderline catty commentary about Christine. The side-story with Mr. Douglas, his mother, and Janet, whom he'd loved for over twenty years, just irked me. I don't know if his mother's two-faced cruelty or the man's lack of backbone bothered me more. And Janet was way too forgiving in my opinion. I know the series was written for kids and has lessons and morals, but they just feel a little too heavy-handed sometimes. However, all that aside, it was mostly an enjoyable read and a little bittersweet to see everyone growing up, and I'm glad Anne stopped being such a dolt about her feelings for Gilbert, even if that part felt needlessly rushed, but I guess it makes sense considering the target audience.
I just can't get enough of this series, of these amazing and beautiful characters, of Avonlea and Anne and Gilbert.
This book wasn't that great at first, because I felt like Davy was such an annoying character. I mean, he's a little boy who makes mistakes, he's a child that's supposed to be annoying, but he was kinda making me not like the book as much as I wanted to.
But then Anne left for Redmond and there was so little of Davy that I started to fall in love with the book again. And oh, what an amazing journey it was. Anne is an adult now, she is in college, she's studying and she is working and she has grown into such a beautiful, brave woman.
Her character is so great because she is not perfect, she makes mistakes and it takes her so long to realize that love is just in front of her. I couldn't be mad at her, but I was sooooo happy when Anne and Gilbert finally declared their love for each othed. I cried so much and theey were tears of happiness. The book was so emotional and full of joy, I know it's going to live rent free in my heart from now on.
Rereading of 2020 :-)
I love these books, they are nostalgic, cult classics to me, so I am totally invalid to give an unbiased, educated rating :-D
“Gilbert had a sudden vision of Anne, arrayed in a frilly green gown, with the virginal curves of arms and throat slipping out of it, and white stars shining against the coils of her ruddy hair. The vision made him catch his breath.”
Reminds me of my husband _ We have been married for 22 years now. (21 3/4 to be precise ;-)) I'm still sheepishly in love with him, and he with me :-) I like reading things in books that remind me of him, and how I imagine he thinks of me or reacts on me.
I like to think Janet and John Douglas got a couple of children. It's not usual for 40 years old woman to be first time mother, but it's not impossible either. I think she deserves to have children. Though they would probably be orphans by the age of 10, considering that 50 years olds are elderly in this world... I mean, Marilla was 40 years older than Anne, so she was 53 when they adopted her.
As you all probably know by now Erin and I have been buddy reading classics with each other this year. We are currently making our way through the Anne of Green Gables series. I love being able to binge read an entire series back to back but it makes it hard to write reviews without saying the same things over and over again so I apologize for continuously repeating myself in these reviews. Also this is the third book in the series so it's hard not to include spoilers so if you haven't read this series yet please skip this review.
As I've mentioned in every review for these books so far I am really loving it. Anne truly makes these books for me and I think listening to the audiobooks has really brought her to like for me. I just love her.
She is grown now. I think she's 20 in the book so she's no longer a child but that doesn't stop her from having a wild imagination and I love that about her. Don't get me wrong she knows what's real and what's not but I love that she hasn't let all of the adults change who she is. She is also one of the only adults who encourages imagination in kids.
There is a lot of telling in these books and not much showing which for the most part works but when it comes to the romance especially I wish there was more showing. I have know that Anne and Gilbert should be together from book 1 but Anne for some reason doesn't admit that she has feeling for him until the end of this book and we didn't really get to see them together all that much.
There were some things that happened with the romance in this book that caused me to give it a 4 star instead of 5 but overall I am still really loving it and can't wait to move on to book 4.
This book felt like a departure from the Anne that had been established in the first two. The entirety of the plot focused on how attractive Anne had become but her personality, which was once unmistakeable, was pushed to the side and barely noticeable.
The nail in the coffin for me was Anne's initial cruelty towards Rusty the cat. Not only did she shoo an injured animal away, but she decided to kill it (albeit unsuccessfully). Based on everything we had learned of Anne in the first two books - from a girl who didn't even want to spank a child - this seemed wildly out of character and ruined the rest of the novel for me.
I'll be starting the fourth, mainly to see the romance play out. Hopefully, Anne returns to her old kind ways in the next one.
Re-read of a favorite classic from childhood/young adulthood. Anne's lovely adventures at college with her friends, both old and new.
I loved the first two books with all my heart but I will not be finishing this book. I just can't.
And trigger warning to anyone who has trouble with animal cruelty... there are two horrific scenes in this book. There might be more. I just couldn't keep reading.
My current neighborhood has a bunch of those Little Free Library things (https://littlefreelibrary.org/), and when I saw this in one, I couldn't pass it up. My husband asked me to estimate the number of times I've read this book, and I don't know. But a lot of times, and it's always wonderfully nostalgic.
My favorite of the Anne books. I love the college years, the many proposals, and of course the thrilling last few pages!