Anne of Avonlea ~ Book Review

So last year when I was shopping at Costco, low and behold they had the whole set of Anne books (all 8 of them) for a fairly decent price and seeing as I loved Anne of Green Gables so much after finally reading it instead of just watching the movie I took the plunge and bought the set. Which totally set me up to join in with Carrie at Reading to Know and her Lucy Maud Montgomery reading challenge. The challenge is to read as many titles as you can by this author in the month of January and I did all of one. But it did get me finally cracking open this set.

 This book sets up Anne as a young 17 year old who has finished school and is now the school teacher in Avonlea. It continues her adventures finding "kindred spirits" in the continuation of her friendship with Dianna and in her new fledgling friendship with the eccentric Miss Lavender. Anne's personality as usual was all bubbly, fresh, and still doing things without thinking them through though not quite as often as when she was younger. I must admit I did miss the precocious young Anne next to the more mature Anne. It was nice to read of her and Diana's friendship blossoming and being strong. The eccentric characters of Mr. Harrison and Miss Lavender were fun and added a quirkiness to the story. I especially loved reading of how her and Marilla's relationship deepened and moved to an "adult" relationship, reminding me of how my own relationship had changed with my mom when I moved out of the teen years. I missed the character of Gilbert a bit as he was barely mentioned, but there was a good set up for him for the next stories.

 There were a few things, though, that I didn't enjoy so much about this second installment in the series. The first was a chapter in the story that had the school children writing letters to Anne about anything they pleased. After perusing letter after letter and Anne's reaction I grew quite bored and basically skipped most of that chapter. Have I mentioned I really dislike letter writing as a form of story telling? I also found some of the conversations of elementary age children, namely Paul Irving and Davy, so involved and long that it got me questioning whether little boys that age actually converse in looooong complicated paragraphs that way. Some of those were scanned by me too. And last but not least I really disliked how it was mentioned several times throughout the novel that of two siblings in their care, Anne and Marilla loved one well above the other. It wasn't "they liked the personality" of one more, it was they "loved" one more than the other. They had conversations about it. That really irked the mother and child care provider in me immensely. I kept asking the book aloud whether they had never read or heard the story of Joseph.

 As a whole, I enjoyed reading Anne of Avonlea. I don't know what has taken me so long because I love the movies starring Megan Follows, so thanks to Carrie for giving me the nudge to get reading.  I gave it an 8 out of 10 so not as high as Anne of Green Gables but still good.