Anne's House of Dreams

Re-reading 2020

Oh... the surprises are not that surprising any longer, but still as emotional. I cried.
I had forgotten half of them. Oddly enough. :-D I have read this several times, and I don't usually forget what I read :-D

Everyone wanting to marry is irritating, though. I have been only recently wondering if these books shouldn't be called romance novels after all.

I don't think Dick and Leslie's marriage was ever consummated... she got pregnant soon enough with her second husband. But maybe Maud entertained the idea of that when you don't want to be married to someone, you won't get pregnant either. A child would have complicated things, though. But it would have made good literature. Maybe she couldn't handle it. Maybe she didn't want to handle it. Maybe we couldn't have ignored that he probably raped her every damned night. (But, that's so ugly. Let's not spoil the effect, and let's assume he was just unpleasant to her, and occasionally hit her, or something. sigh)

I pretty much have the same thing to say about this book that I have said about previous books in the series. I am really enjoying following along with Anne as she grows and getting to know new characters. In my review for the previous book I mentioned that I wanted more of Gilbert and we did get that to some extent in this book but the author still managed to have him be in the background for the most part which at this point I am used to but I'm still annoyed about it. I also mentioned that all of the side characters were all pretty much the same. In this book we get to know knew characters and there were 2 that really stood out to me. They did seem like someone we had previously gotten to know so that was good. Again still really enjoying these books and look forward to continuing on in the series next year.

While at times I found the dialogue a bit grating (the gratuitous exclamation marks and all-caps took some time to get used to) the story was enjoyable and much more gripping than past Anne books. The mystery involved kept me hanging on to every sentence, and though there were very sad moments, the ending was realistically happy and joyful.