Blue Archipelago

Anne of Windy Willows

Rating

3 stars - lacks the magic of the previous three Anne books

Description

Anne Shirley has left Redmond College behind to begin a new job and a new chapter of her life away from Green Gables. Now she faces a new challenge: the Pringles. They’re known as the royal family of Summerside - and they quickly let Anne know she is not the person they had wanted as principal of Summerside High School. But as she settles into the cozy tower room at Windy Poplars, Anne finds she has great allies in the widows Aunt Kate and Aunt Chatty - and in their irrepressible housekeeper, Rebecca Dew. As Anne learns Summerside’s strangest secrets, winning the support of the prickly Pringles becomes only the first of her triumphs.

The Book Review

I really hate to say this but I was disappointed by this book - Anne of Windy Willows is the fourth in Montgomery’s Anne series - and it just didn’t grasp my heart strings like the previous three.

Don’t get me wrong, Montgomery still writes with charm and wit but I was looking forward to the developing relationship between Anne and Gilbert, and finding out more about Marilla, Mrs Lynde and the twins.

This book is largely written as a series of letters from Anne to Gilbert as she shares with him the trials and tribulations of the people she meets in Summerside. When Anne is central to the happenings the book is certainly enjoyable - but more often than not she shares the tales of cursed widows and ill-fated lovers.

Montgomery covers a further three years of Anne’s life in this novel - but I feel she could have compacted it into a third of the pages. For all the endearments that Anne wrote to Gilbert he only appeared in person once in the whole novel and then didn’t say a word!

I think that as a stand-alone ‘chronicles’ this book should be appreciated - but for a reader who yearns for tales of Anne and her loved ones it left me wanting.

Let’s hope that Anne’s House of Dreams takes me back down the well-trodden path I was looking for with Windy Willows.

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