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Emily #2
Emily Climbs
"I love Emily."―Madeleine L'Engle Keeping a Promise Was Never So Difficult Emily Starr knows that she is destined to become a great writer. But she also knows that her life will be absolutely miserable if she can't attend school with her bosom friends. And the only way her strict Aunt Elizabeth will let her go to high school in Shrewsbury is if Emily surrenders her pen―for good. Emily almost convinces herself that she can survive without writing, especially when she catches the eye of Teddy Kent. But she can't stop herself from secretly recording all of her hilarious adventures and coming-of-age heartbreaks. When the local paper gets ahold of her writing and offers her an exciting opportunity, Emily will have to decide how much she's willing to sacrifice as she climbs towards her dreams. This new edition lovingly restores the original, unabridged text and includes an all-new, exclusive introduction with special memories from L.M. Montgomery's granddaughter. What Readers Are "A spunky, mysterious, and lightly romantic read." "There is much more to this book than anyone would expect―wonderful, complex characters and very subtle, sly underlying themes." "Five stars for being beautiful, inspiring, funny, and magical."
368 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1925
380 people are currently reading
11689 people want to read
About the author
L.M. Montgomery
1,987 books13.4k followersLucy Maud Montgomery was a Canadian author, best known for a series of novels beginning with Anne of Green Gables, published in 1908.
Montgomery was born at Clifton, Prince Edward Island, Nov. 30, 1874. She came to live at Leaskdale, north of Uxbridge Ontario, after her wedding with Rev. Ewen Macdonald on July 11, 1911. She had three children and wrote close to a dozen books while she was living in the Leaskdale Manse before the family moved to Norval, Ontario in 1926. She died in Toronto April 24, 1942 and was buried at Cavendish, Prince Edward Island.
Montgomery was born at Clifton, Prince Edward Island, Nov. 30, 1874. She came to live at Leaskdale, north of Uxbridge Ontario, after her wedding with Rev. Ewen Macdonald on July 11, 1911. She had three children and wrote close to a dozen books while she was living in the Leaskdale Manse before the family moved to Norval, Ontario in 1926. She died in Toronto April 24, 1942 and was buried at Cavendish, Prince Edward Island.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,180 reviews
June 12, 2017
Emily Climbs is the 2nd book in Lucy Maud Montgomerys Emily series, and it is near perfection in classic young adult literature. I loved the first book but this one is even better. Emily of New Moon was introducing characters, setting story lines, etc., but in this book Emily shines like a full moon over Prince Edward Island. Emily is destined to be a writer, she knows it in her heart, although her aunts, the New Moon Murray's, think she is foolish. Nevertheless, they agree to send her to high school where she writes for the local newspaper and begins to get her poems published in magazines. Emily is climbing that hill of success and her friends, and even her aunts start to believe she just may make it. Her school age friends, Ilse, Perry, and her hearts love, Teddy, combine to produce many episodes that will make the reader laugh out loud and keep Emily in hot water with her very conservative aunts. Emily is not as famous as another Montgomery character, Anne Shirley, of Anne of Green Gables fame, but she is every bit as lovable. A resounding 5 stars for this jewel.
December 10, 2023
An pal of mine has a theory that you're either a "A Little Princess" kind of person, or a "A Secret Garden" kind of person. I'd argue that the same "2 kinds of people" rule could be created for Anne versus Emily. Me? I'm totally a "A Little Princess" girl, and while I do dearly love Anne, I'm so much more of an Emily. Which is interesting. B/c I think Little Princess-Anne and Secret Garden-Emily would more naturally correlate. Clearly, I'm an enigma. Even more clearly, I'm also thinking about this WAY too much....
June 16, 2025
کاش یکی کاور کتاب هارو جابه جا کنه.
آخه چه کاریه ؟؟
بی نظیر بود این جلد 😍😍
اما در شرایطی خیلی بدی خوندمش ☹️☹️
آخه چه کاریه ؟؟
بی نظیر بود این جلد 😍😍
اما در شرایطی خیلی بدی خوندمش ☹️☹️
December 19, 2017
My only complaints about this book are in the story itself - some characters I would have liked to see more of. That's it. The execution is flawless, hence the five stars.
Emily Climbs picks up shortly after Emily of New Moon . Our heroine is happily scribbling her days away in the company of her three besties when she learns that all three—Ilse, Perry, and Teddy—are going to high school a few towns away. Strict Aunt Elizabeth will only allow Emily to join them if the girl swears off writing fiction for the next three years. Her soul quailing at this injustice, Emily takes the offer, and half of the book is the diary she keeps to stave off madness during this period.
Despite Aunt Ruth—a tyrant so Draconian she makes Elizabeth Murray look positively reasonable—and the mean girl machinations of one Evelyn Blake—the four amigos manage to get into all kinds of memorable scrapes, as they always have. Yet something indescribable has changed, particularly between Emily and Teddy. She can sense it but can’t give it a name. She also has a mystical experience that leads to the discovery of a lost child.
The fiction ban doesn’t stop E.B. Starr from writing, though – she gains recognition for her poems and essays, and becomes aware of burgeoning career opportunities by the end of the book. Will she pursue her muse to New York, the land of publishing, and forsake her heritage? Will she stay on the Island to endure obscurity and small-minded gossip (of which she has already often been a victim)? Is there a third way?
And then there’s Dean Priest, he of the deep thoughts and striking green eyes, who wants to teach Emily how to write a realistic conversation between lovers. At seventeen years old, she still isn’t sure what precisely he means by this. Never underestimate the ability of a Victorian/Edwardian heroine to not notice when a man is in love with her.
Like most of Montgomery’s work, the book is episodic, with little overarching plot, but the characters still grow and change. Emily, in particular, matures a lot over the course of the story while maintaining all the key components of her personality. It’s tempting to compare her to her author’s famous Anne, but while the two girls are similar they’re hardly the same. Emily is very much Montgomery herself—brilliant, insightful, caring but proud, romantic but sarcastic, sometimes even cruel. While the girl is repeatedly described as beautiful, she’s so flawed that the tired old accusation, “Mary Sue!”, boomerangs right off her.
Her three friends are much the same as ever. Ilse is still a big, maladjusted but somehow lovable, spitfire (at one point she even declares her intention to “knock [someone’s] block off” like Lucy van Pelt) who nurses a crush on Perry that is obvious to everyone except its object. Perry is still coarse and clumsy and determined—both in terms of his political career and Emily, who is colder with him than she needs to be. Teddy at least has more than three lines of dialogue in this one, and we see first-hand what a ghoul his mother is instead of just hearing about it, but he’s still a flat designated dreamboat with few if any character traits.
The host of Aunts are a hoot, as always, especially that suspicious old rascal Ruth, who is finally revealed to be a human being 75% into the book. From Montgomery, one gathers that the average resident of Prince Edward Island in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was obsessed with family histories, never forgot a scandal, and harbored a deep fear of French Canadians, Catholics, and Americans.
Dean is easily the most developed and intriguing character, after Emily, and both the girl and the book take on a deeper, spookier and more mature aspect every time he shows up. I wish he had stuck around more, but he does get a lot more screen time (page time?) than he did in book I, and I’m grateful for that. This man is actually interesting. Twenty years older than Emily and embittered by implied experience, he has connected deeply with this girl and hopes to marry her when she comes of age. He lights up her imagination and sets her soul loose in a way that sweet little Teddy, for all his good intentions, could never do.
I think she picks Teddy in book III. I’m not happy about that, but Montgomery probably knew that her fans would prefer a Gilbert/Anne style pairing to Hades and Persephone on PEI. But Teddy only resembles Gilbert superficially. Gilbert and Anne’s first years of acquaintance were fraught with miscommunication and angst, that both of them had to power through, shedding their egos along the way, in order to even become friends. Even after they were married, their differences caused friction—and they kept growing as people all through the series.
There is no quarrel or friction, or tension of any sort, between Emily and Teddy. They are friends. They have never been anything but friends. Their spats, when they have them, are tiny and meaningless and quickly forgotten. Neither of them poses the tiniest challenge to the other.
Dean, on the other hand, is Emily’s opposite in many ways—his worldliness against her innocence, his secrecy against her sleeve-dwelling heart, his control-freak tendencies against her wildness. Yet they can talk with each other in a way they could never hope to with anyone else; their hopes, dreams and worries are cut from the same light-and-dark cloth. The chemistry between them is palpable. He is her shadow, and whatever happens in the end, they belong together.
CONTENT ADVISORY: I feel obligated to feature this because a lot of folks assume a book from the author of Anne of Green Gables must be rated G. This one, like the first in its series, is PG.
Violence: The usual for this time period. Nothing shown, but a few references to women, children and animals getting beaten.
Sex: Really nothing to worry about, except that Emily, now in her late teens, is starting to dress like an adult and the young menfolk NOTICE. Rumors of impropriety attach themselves to her, namely that she and Ilse went skinny-dipping (they wore their chemises and bloomers) and that both girls spent the night disreputably with Perry and Teddy (they were caught in a blizzard and had to shelter in an abandoned house overnight).
I will also use this space to clarify that Dean is not a pedophile, as some of you have so gleefully labelled him.
A pedophile is an adult with a perverse sexual attraction to small children—ten years old or younger. Someone who likes postpubescent teens is an ephebophile. The last strikes me as an almost unnecessary term, since a kid of either gender over the age of sixteen or seventeen is physically an adult, and was considered one in most societies until the last century or so.
Emily was thirteen or so when Dean met her, but had an old face for her age and implied to be well along in puberty. I personally wish that their meeting had taken place one or two years later, but nothing inappropriate happened then, or has happened yet.
Observe that when Dean found Emily she was clinging to a root or vine for dear life, since the ground of the cliff she’d been walking along had fallen away beneath her. If he were really a sexual predator, he would have pulled this helpless girl back to safety and then done something unspeakable to her, or at least pretended to be her friend while plotting to rape her at a later date. Not only did he do no such thing, but he brought her home promptly, safe and sound.
They have been going on long walks alone together, often at night, for four years now, and he has never once made a move—except arguably for the one time we see him in this book, where she teasingly asks him to help her with some of that romantic dialogue and he almost kisses her—but even then, he waits for her permission and when she panics and grabs a cat to bury her face in, he backs off again. What a sick, perverted man. He gives Harvey Weinstein a run for his money. (I jest).
Language: Frequent use of the word “ass” which back then was more likely to mean “idiot” than “rear end.”
Substance Abuse: Perry tells Ilse to drink some whiskey to help her upset stomach—which the town gossips naturally elaborate into a bacchanal.
All in all, a very good book that leaves me eager for the third and final installment.
Emily Climbs picks up shortly after Emily of New Moon . Our heroine is happily scribbling her days away in the company of her three besties when she learns that all three—Ilse, Perry, and Teddy—are going to high school a few towns away. Strict Aunt Elizabeth will only allow Emily to join them if the girl swears off writing fiction for the next three years. Her soul quailing at this injustice, Emily takes the offer, and half of the book is the diary she keeps to stave off madness during this period.
Despite Aunt Ruth—a tyrant so Draconian she makes Elizabeth Murray look positively reasonable—and the mean girl machinations of one Evelyn Blake—the four amigos manage to get into all kinds of memorable scrapes, as they always have. Yet something indescribable has changed, particularly between Emily and Teddy. She can sense it but can’t give it a name. She also has a mystical experience that leads to the discovery of a lost child.
The fiction ban doesn’t stop E.B. Starr from writing, though – she gains recognition for her poems and essays, and becomes aware of burgeoning career opportunities by the end of the book. Will she pursue her muse to New York, the land of publishing, and forsake her heritage? Will she stay on the Island to endure obscurity and small-minded gossip (of which she has already often been a victim)? Is there a third way?
And then there’s Dean Priest, he of the deep thoughts and striking green eyes, who wants to teach Emily how to write a realistic conversation between lovers. At seventeen years old, she still isn’t sure what precisely he means by this. Never underestimate the ability of a Victorian/Edwardian heroine to not notice when a man is in love with her.
Like most of Montgomery’s work, the book is episodic, with little overarching plot, but the characters still grow and change. Emily, in particular, matures a lot over the course of the story while maintaining all the key components of her personality. It’s tempting to compare her to her author’s famous Anne, but while the two girls are similar they’re hardly the same. Emily is very much Montgomery herself—brilliant, insightful, caring but proud, romantic but sarcastic, sometimes even cruel. While the girl is repeatedly described as beautiful, she’s so flawed that the tired old accusation, “Mary Sue!”, boomerangs right off her.
Her three friends are much the same as ever. Ilse is still a big, maladjusted but somehow lovable, spitfire (at one point she even declares her intention to “knock [someone’s] block off” like Lucy van Pelt) who nurses a crush on Perry that is obvious to everyone except its object. Perry is still coarse and clumsy and determined—both in terms of his political career and Emily, who is colder with him than she needs to be. Teddy at least has more than three lines of dialogue in this one, and we see first-hand what a ghoul his mother is instead of just hearing about it, but he’s still a flat designated dreamboat with few if any character traits.
The host of Aunts are a hoot, as always, especially that suspicious old rascal Ruth, who is finally revealed to be a human being 75% into the book. From Montgomery, one gathers that the average resident of Prince Edward Island in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was obsessed with family histories, never forgot a scandal, and harbored a deep fear of French Canadians, Catholics, and Americans.
Dean is easily the most developed and intriguing character, after Emily, and both the girl and the book take on a deeper, spookier and more mature aspect every time he shows up. I wish he had stuck around more, but he does get a lot more screen time (page time?) than he did in book I, and I’m grateful for that. This man is actually interesting. Twenty years older than Emily and embittered by implied experience, he has connected deeply with this girl and hopes to marry her when she comes of age. He lights up her imagination and sets her soul loose in a way that sweet little Teddy, for all his good intentions, could never do.
I think she picks Teddy in book III. I’m not happy about that, but Montgomery probably knew that her fans would prefer a Gilbert/Anne style pairing to Hades and Persephone on PEI. But Teddy only resembles Gilbert superficially. Gilbert and Anne’s first years of acquaintance were fraught with miscommunication and angst, that both of them had to power through, shedding their egos along the way, in order to even become friends. Even after they were married, their differences caused friction—and they kept growing as people all through the series.
There is no quarrel or friction, or tension of any sort, between Emily and Teddy. They are friends. They have never been anything but friends. Their spats, when they have them, are tiny and meaningless and quickly forgotten. Neither of them poses the tiniest challenge to the other.
Dean, on the other hand, is Emily’s opposite in many ways—his worldliness against her innocence, his secrecy against her sleeve-dwelling heart, his control-freak tendencies against her wildness. Yet they can talk with each other in a way they could never hope to with anyone else; their hopes, dreams and worries are cut from the same light-and-dark cloth. The chemistry between them is palpable. He is her shadow, and whatever happens in the end, they belong together.
CONTENT ADVISORY: I feel obligated to feature this because a lot of folks assume a book from the author of Anne of Green Gables must be rated G. This one, like the first in its series, is PG.
Violence: The usual for this time period. Nothing shown, but a few references to women, children and animals getting beaten.
Sex: Really nothing to worry about, except that Emily, now in her late teens, is starting to dress like an adult and the young menfolk NOTICE. Rumors of impropriety attach themselves to her, namely that she and Ilse went skinny-dipping (they wore their chemises and bloomers) and that both girls spent the night disreputably with Perry and Teddy (they were caught in a blizzard and had to shelter in an abandoned house overnight).
I will also use this space to clarify that Dean is not a pedophile, as some of you have so gleefully labelled him.
A pedophile is an adult with a perverse sexual attraction to small children—ten years old or younger. Someone who likes postpubescent teens is an ephebophile. The last strikes me as an almost unnecessary term, since a kid of either gender over the age of sixteen or seventeen is physically an adult, and was considered one in most societies until the last century or so.
Emily was thirteen or so when Dean met her, but had an old face for her age and implied to be well along in puberty. I personally wish that their meeting had taken place one or two years later, but nothing inappropriate happened then, or has happened yet.
Observe that when Dean found Emily she was clinging to a root or vine for dear life, since the ground of the cliff she’d been walking along had fallen away beneath her. If he were really a sexual predator, he would have pulled this helpless girl back to safety and then done something unspeakable to her, or at least pretended to be her friend while plotting to rape her at a later date. Not only did he do no such thing, but he brought her home promptly, safe and sound.
They have been going on long walks alone together, often at night, for four years now, and he has never once made a move—except arguably for the one time we see him in this book, where she teasingly asks him to help her with some of that romantic dialogue and he almost kisses her—but even then, he waits for her permission and when she panics and grabs a cat to bury her face in, he backs off again. What a sick, perverted man. He gives Harvey Weinstein a run for his money. (I jest).
Language: Frequent use of the word “ass” which back then was more likely to mean “idiot” than “rear end.”
Substance Abuse: Perry tells Ilse to drink some whiskey to help her upset stomach—which the town gossips naturally elaborate into a bacchanal.
All in all, a very good book that leaves me eager for the third and final installment.
September 3, 2022
چرا کاور جلد سوم رو گذاشتن برای جلد دوم؟ 🤔...
این جلد خیلی خیلی خوب بود..
واقعا عالی
خیلی دوستش داشتم.
امیلی عزیزم😍 چالش جالب و جذابی رو توی این جلد پشت سر گذاشت!
این جلد خیلی خیلی خوب بود..
واقعا عالی
خیلی دوستش داشتم.
امیلی عزیزم😍 چالش جالب و جذابی رو توی این جلد پشت سر گذاشت!
March 4, 2023
4.5✨
مونتگمری هربار با یه کتاب جدید بهم ثابت میکنه که چرا نویسندهی موردعلاقهمه. باعث میشه دوباره با طبیعت و تمام چیزهایی که توی دنیا دوستشون دارم ارتباط برقرار کنم و برای تکتک اتفاقات کوچیک هیجانزده بشم. باعث میشه دلم بخواد تجربه و زندگی کنم❤️✨
مونتگمری هربار با یه کتاب جدید بهم ثابت میکنه که چرا نویسندهی موردعلاقهمه. باعث میشه دوباره با طبیعت و تمام چیزهایی که توی دنیا دوستشون دارم ارتباط برقرار کنم و برای تکتک اتفاقات کوچیک هیجانزده بشم. باعث میشه دلم بخواد تجربه و زندگی کنم❤️✨
November 21, 2023
"چطور میتوانست خانهای را ترک کند که به او پناه داده و عشق ورزیده بود؟
نگویید خانه که عشق نمیورزد."
دوستش داشتم با اینکه پونزده بیست سال زودتر باید میخوندمش.
نگویید خانه که عشق نمیورزد."
دوستش داشتم با اینکه پونزده بیست سال زودتر باید میخوندمش.
November 12, 2024
November 7th
Last night, I've been busy crying over a decision i didn't make: i asked myself, if you go back in time, would you still do it?
I, desperately weeping, answered "no". I hate to confess that things i did, were wrong. Then i cried much more harshly.
Oh, dear what a tragedy. Our teacher said what we know about tragedy, is not exactly what it is. Isn't it, really?
The other morning, i met a fair old lady. She asked me for help. I helped her. I wanted to ask her if there was an answer for me. I wanted to ask if she could remember her 18th, when she was full, full of mistakes. What happened to your sins ma'am?
But i didn't؛ what a loss.
How dreadful it is to live this pointless. I dyed my hair so that i could feel something. I still cannot understand a thing.
I assume isolation would the answer.
Last night, I've been busy crying over a decision i didn't make: i asked myself, if you go back in time, would you still do it?
I, desperately weeping, answered "no". I hate to confess that things i did, were wrong. Then i cried much more harshly.
Oh, dear what a tragedy. Our teacher said what we know about tragedy, is not exactly what it is. Isn't it, really?
The other morning, i met a fair old lady. She asked me for help. I helped her. I wanted to ask her if there was an answer for me. I wanted to ask if she could remember her 18th, when she was full, full of mistakes. What happened to your sins ma'am?
But i didn't؛ what a loss.
How dreadful it is to live this pointless. I dyed my hair so that i could feel something. I still cannot understand a thing.
I assume isolation would the answer.
Read
July 13, 2019This series is turning out to be a lot more complex than how I pinned it after the first book. I mean, there are still acres of whimsical nature descriptions (so much purple and gold and red and gray and misty and pearly and magical and kill me), and still aspects that feel derivative of the Anne books. But the methodical way Montgomery has matured Emily’s own writing, and the steady steps that have been taken away from childhood rapture toward bittersweet adulthood, have made me consider the depth of this trilogy more carefully. I have a feeling the third book will be very, very sad in a Good Wives sort of way. My cold heart might be made to feel many feelings.
September 29, 2017
L.M. Montgomery's Emily series is, for me, not in the same class as Anne of Green Gables but it is still a very pleasant and enjoyable read. Like Anne, Emily is feisty, intelligent, appealing and liable to get into scrapes. In Emily Climbs she progresses through her teenage years. Her single minded desire is to be an author and we see her having some small successes in this ambition. She shares important moments in her life with close family and friends and struggles to sort out her feelings towards several young men.
I very much enjoy the way this author writes and although I do not feel that Emily Starr has the same magic as Anne Shirley, her story is still great fun to read.
I very much enjoy the way this author writes and although I do not feel that Emily Starr has the same magic as Anne Shirley, her story is still great fun to read.
February 20, 2015
I did some reflecting in my (review? Essay? Piece?) thing on Emily of New Moon about why I don't love Emily as much as Anne, why I haven't read the trilogy in many years when I won't let a year go by Anne-less. Emily Climbs clarifies the matter a bit more.
There is a great deal more cynicism in Emily's world than in Anne's. I was astonished reading the first chapters at Emily's perceptiveness – and, like any perceptive person moving among the unimaginative and less incisive, she has, very young, developed an almost inevitable shell of jaded sarcasm. Mr. Carpenter doesn't call her "Jade" for nothing. I don't class myself with Emily (or Anne) in terms of intelligence or sensitivity, but still, I am of their ilk. Emily weeps over David Copperfield - oh, how I understand that. Aunt Ruth (not of the race that knows Joseph) upbraids her for the tears – crying over people who don't exist! And, with Emily, I protest that of course they exist. In a meta moment, Emily tells her they are as real as Aunt Ruth is – and so they are, of course. But Ruth is part of the force that demonstrates daily for Emily how flat most people's lives are – none of the terrible deep dark moments for them, but also none of the marvellous highs – nor even the small secret pleasures a combination of being able to see and being able to appreciate can bring. Aunt Elizabeth is Marilla without the sense of humor, and with a solid layer of scarring – from the accident with Jimmy to, probably, the fact that she is single in a time and place where spinsterhood is a wretched condition – to prevent most softer emotions … Aunt Laura has her moments, is loving and more willing and able to share it, but is prim and easily shocked. Uncle Jimmy is wonderful – but not comfortable, always; there is the occasional glimpse of what he might have been, of what was all but killed in him by the fall into the well, and you never quite know when it will make an appearance. Dr. Burnley has gone from bitter and cynical to … rather less bitter and cynical, and somewhat excessive. Aunt Ruth … Were I Emily, I think of the two conditions going to school in Shrewsbury, that I would lodge with Aunt Ruth and that I could not write any fiction for three years, the Aunt Ruth half would be worse. Fiction will still be there when it's over; the scars Aunt Ruth might leave will linger forever. Writing fiction is a passion which would not die in three years; living with Aunt Ruth would be torment. And so it was.
The idea of the wild, dark vein that exists here, but not in most of the rest of L.M.M.'s work as I know it, intensified as it went on. Emily has a mean streak – not very big, and not well-developed, but expressed now and then in sarcasm and cutting remarks which send people off bleeding and vowing never to mess with her again. And she has an understanding for darkness; she hears goblins as well as wind spirits, and the thought is inescapable that she could have easily gone either way. Had she been raised by Uncle Wallace … I can see her at the age she is ending the trilogy, with a career as a viciously funny writer, slashing more tender folk to shreds and making millions doing it, but treasuring more the string of scalps at her belt than all the money.
I think I was too young to get hold of all of this the last time I read Emily, and so these three books were not as enjoyable as the sweet and lovely place that is Anne's Avonlea. Anne has her moments – but compare her handling of Josie Pye to Emily's dealings with the evil Evelyn Blake. Anne wins by taking the high road, and Josie Pye, Pye-like, would never recognize her victory; Emily routs Evelyn foot and horse and leaves her bleeding in the dust.
I loved this tale of the teenaged girl beginning to make a mark for herself. The tangled webs, to reference another LMM work, are beginning to tighten, but they aren't too heavy yet; the future is still completely unwritten, or seemingly so, and hope is high. There is a savor of the time and place, not so very long ago or very far away except in everything that matters; good companionship; wonderful writing; pathos in its best sense and moments that made me laugh aloud. Middle books are often maligned and disregarded things, but this is by far my favorite of the three. I'll never again be able to leave Emily out my list of the Montgomery girls I love.
ETA: I found the pictures in Emily's room at Aunt Ruth's! http://agoldoffish.wordpress.com/2011...
There is a great deal more cynicism in Emily's world than in Anne's. I was astonished reading the first chapters at Emily's perceptiveness – and, like any perceptive person moving among the unimaginative and less incisive, she has, very young, developed an almost inevitable shell of jaded sarcasm. Mr. Carpenter doesn't call her "Jade" for nothing. I don't class myself with Emily (or Anne) in terms of intelligence or sensitivity, but still, I am of their ilk. Emily weeps over David Copperfield - oh, how I understand that. Aunt Ruth (not of the race that knows Joseph) upbraids her for the tears – crying over people who don't exist! And, with Emily, I protest that of course they exist. In a meta moment, Emily tells her they are as real as Aunt Ruth is – and so they are, of course. But Ruth is part of the force that demonstrates daily for Emily how flat most people's lives are – none of the terrible deep dark moments for them, but also none of the marvellous highs – nor even the small secret pleasures a combination of being able to see and being able to appreciate can bring. Aunt Elizabeth is Marilla without the sense of humor, and with a solid layer of scarring – from the accident with Jimmy to, probably, the fact that she is single in a time and place where spinsterhood is a wretched condition – to prevent most softer emotions … Aunt Laura has her moments, is loving and more willing and able to share it, but is prim and easily shocked. Uncle Jimmy is wonderful – but not comfortable, always; there is the occasional glimpse of what he might have been, of what was all but killed in him by the fall into the well, and you never quite know when it will make an appearance. Dr. Burnley has gone from bitter and cynical to … rather less bitter and cynical, and somewhat excessive. Aunt Ruth … Were I Emily, I think of the two conditions going to school in Shrewsbury, that I would lodge with Aunt Ruth and that I could not write any fiction for three years, the Aunt Ruth half would be worse. Fiction will still be there when it's over; the scars Aunt Ruth might leave will linger forever. Writing fiction is a passion which would not die in three years; living with Aunt Ruth would be torment. And so it was.
The idea of the wild, dark vein that exists here, but not in most of the rest of L.M.M.'s work as I know it, intensified as it went on. Emily has a mean streak – not very big, and not well-developed, but expressed now and then in sarcasm and cutting remarks which send people off bleeding and vowing never to mess with her again. And she has an understanding for darkness; she hears goblins as well as wind spirits, and the thought is inescapable that she could have easily gone either way. Had she been raised by Uncle Wallace … I can see her at the age she is ending the trilogy, with a career as a viciously funny writer, slashing more tender folk to shreds and making millions doing it, but treasuring more the string of scalps at her belt than all the money.
I think I was too young to get hold of all of this the last time I read Emily, and so these three books were not as enjoyable as the sweet and lovely place that is Anne's Avonlea. Anne has her moments – but compare her handling of Josie Pye to Emily's dealings with the evil Evelyn Blake. Anne wins by taking the high road, and Josie Pye, Pye-like, would never recognize her victory; Emily routs Evelyn foot and horse and leaves her bleeding in the dust.
I loved this tale of the teenaged girl beginning to make a mark for herself. The tangled webs, to reference another LMM work, are beginning to tighten, but they aren't too heavy yet; the future is still completely unwritten, or seemingly so, and hope is high. There is a savor of the time and place, not so very long ago or very far away except in everything that matters; good companionship; wonderful writing; pathos in its best sense and moments that made me laugh aloud. Middle books are often maligned and disregarded things, but this is by far my favorite of the three. I'll never again be able to leave Emily out my list of the Montgomery girls I love.
ETA: I found the pictures in Emily's room at Aunt Ruth's! http://agoldoffish.wordpress.com/2011...
February 5, 2020
Just a wee bit too episodic at times for my liking and personal tastes (and with especially the chapters where Emil Byrd Starr and best friend Ilse Burnley go canvassing for magazine subscriptions, where Emily through her supposed second sight then locates little lost Alan Bradshaw feeling at least to and for me a trifle tacked on so to speak and almost as though L.M. Montgomery has felt as though she desperately requires yet another instance of Emily Byrd Starr being presented as someone with supposed psychic powers in order to cement her depiction and description of Emily as a person of magic, artistry, of Emily as a creature of starlight and occasional uncanniness, albeit I do admit absolutely loving the tale of the woman who spanked the king) and that sometimes, in particular the imagined diary entries do tend to interrupt narrative flow a bit, generally L.M. Montgomery's second instalment of the Emily of New Moon trilogy (Emily Climbs) features (in my opinion) as both a more than worthy and adequate sequel to Emily of New Moon and also nicely and effortlessly then ties the latter, ties Emily Climbs to the third novel, to Emily's Quest.
And indeed, all my mild criticisms of Emily Climbs mentioned above notwithstanding (as well as the personal frustrations with the annoying truth of the matter that I have also found one of my favourite characters from the first novel, from Emily of New Moon, that I have found Dean Priest increasingly turning too clingy, too demanding and strangely jealous in Emily Climbs and with Perry Miller, his constant bragging and that he obviously is incredibly clueless regarding the fact that Emily is NOT AT ALL interested in him in a romantic manner also really getting on my nerves) I certainly have very much enjoyed reading about Emily Byrd Starr's experiences (and multiple escapades) going to high school in Shrewsbury, and in particular how she is increasingly growing up and becoming more and more sure of herself (including how she usually and hilariously does manage to rout arch rival Evelyn Blake with pointed and excruciatingly hilarious sarcasm, finally leaving the latter squirmingly helpless and Emily Byrd Starr as the total victor with the timely and satisfying discovery and outing that Evelyn did in fact copy that poem for which she won an award over Emily's own and non plagiarised submission).
And yes even L.M. Montgomery's descriptions of Emily having to live with her more often than not rather odious and overbearing Aunt Ruth have generally been rather amusing and enlighteningly engaging. But to be honest, Ruth Dutton's constant refrain that Emily somehow is sly and untrustworthy, that does sometimes feel a bit over-used and exaggerated by L.M. Montgomery and actually has made me even want to at times skim over certain parts of Emily Climbs since reading over and over again about Emily constantly being labelled as someone not to be trusted and consistently denigrated gets a bit same old, same old and lamely tedious (although I have to admit broadly and pleasurably smiling at the episode where Emily finally overhears her aunt praising her to a visitor and realising that perhaps Aunt Ruth does not actually despise her but will of course never ever likely say many if any laudatory and positive words of encouragement to her face).
Finally, while I do not particularly like (and am also infuriated) in Emily Climbs having Emily's Aunt Elizabeth Murray exact that mandate of Emily not being allowed to write fictional stories in order for her to be able to attend high school in Shrewsbury (as of course it would be the Murrays footing the bill, paying Emily's tuition and expenses and well, especially Aunt Elizabeth strongly considers fiction as writing falsehoods) I do appreciate and cheer that Emily does not simply agree and say yes and amen to Aunt Elizabeth's unreasonable demands of NO WRITING whatsoever and that between both Emily and her cousin Jimmy, they manage to both reason with and convince Aunt Elizabeth that Emily need only promise not to pen "stories" and that writing non fiction and poetry would still be allowed and deemed acceptable.
And yes, reading Emily Climbs and Emily Byrd Starr's continuous development and maturation as a writer, in my opinion, having Emily be forced to reign in her imagination a bit in order to pen reasonable and acceptable non fiction accounts is actually (in retrospect) a very good ways and means of training Emily's writing skills for the time when she will finally be once again free to write fiction. For when after Great Aunt Nancy's death, Aunt Elizabeth tells her niece that since she has now been provided for education-wise in the latter's will, she also no longer is bound by her promise to not write prose fiction as Aunt Elizabeth Murray will naturally no longer be responsible for providing the funds for Emily's education, to and for me, it sure also does seem as though that after Great Aunt Nancy Priest's death, while Emily is of course ecstatic that she can once again let her imagination run wild and compose, pen fictional stories, her enforced break of having to limit herself to non fiction for much of Emily Climbs has actually been a godsend in many ways, as it also has made Emily's fiction writing less exaggerated, more realistic and believable, that Aunt Elizabeth's demands that her niece not write ANY fiction (while she was paying Emily's expenses) have actually made Emily Byrd Starr into a better and less overly emotional and exaggerated writer across the board.
And indeed, all my mild criticisms of Emily Climbs mentioned above notwithstanding (as well as the personal frustrations with the annoying truth of the matter that I have also found one of my favourite characters from the first novel, from Emily of New Moon, that I have found Dean Priest increasingly turning too clingy, too demanding and strangely jealous in Emily Climbs and with Perry Miller, his constant bragging and that he obviously is incredibly clueless regarding the fact that Emily is NOT AT ALL interested in him in a romantic manner also really getting on my nerves) I certainly have very much enjoyed reading about Emily Byrd Starr's experiences (and multiple escapades) going to high school in Shrewsbury, and in particular how she is increasingly growing up and becoming more and more sure of herself (including how she usually and hilariously does manage to rout arch rival Evelyn Blake with pointed and excruciatingly hilarious sarcasm, finally leaving the latter squirmingly helpless and Emily Byrd Starr as the total victor with the timely and satisfying discovery and outing that Evelyn did in fact copy that poem for which she won an award over Emily's own and non plagiarised submission).
And yes even L.M. Montgomery's descriptions of Emily having to live with her more often than not rather odious and overbearing Aunt Ruth have generally been rather amusing and enlighteningly engaging. But to be honest, Ruth Dutton's constant refrain that Emily somehow is sly and untrustworthy, that does sometimes feel a bit over-used and exaggerated by L.M. Montgomery and actually has made me even want to at times skim over certain parts of Emily Climbs since reading over and over again about Emily constantly being labelled as someone not to be trusted and consistently denigrated gets a bit same old, same old and lamely tedious (although I have to admit broadly and pleasurably smiling at the episode where Emily finally overhears her aunt praising her to a visitor and realising that perhaps Aunt Ruth does not actually despise her but will of course never ever likely say many if any laudatory and positive words of encouragement to her face).
Finally, while I do not particularly like (and am also infuriated) in Emily Climbs having Emily's Aunt Elizabeth Murray exact that mandate of Emily not being allowed to write fictional stories in order for her to be able to attend high school in Shrewsbury (as of course it would be the Murrays footing the bill, paying Emily's tuition and expenses and well, especially Aunt Elizabeth strongly considers fiction as writing falsehoods) I do appreciate and cheer that Emily does not simply agree and say yes and amen to Aunt Elizabeth's unreasonable demands of NO WRITING whatsoever and that between both Emily and her cousin Jimmy, they manage to both reason with and convince Aunt Elizabeth that Emily need only promise not to pen "stories" and that writing non fiction and poetry would still be allowed and deemed acceptable.
And yes, reading Emily Climbs and Emily Byrd Starr's continuous development and maturation as a writer, in my opinion, having Emily be forced to reign in her imagination a bit in order to pen reasonable and acceptable non fiction accounts is actually (in retrospect) a very good ways and means of training Emily's writing skills for the time when she will finally be once again free to write fiction. For when after Great Aunt Nancy's death, Aunt Elizabeth tells her niece that since she has now been provided for education-wise in the latter's will, she also no longer is bound by her promise to not write prose fiction as Aunt Elizabeth Murray will naturally no longer be responsible for providing the funds for Emily's education, to and for me, it sure also does seem as though that after Great Aunt Nancy Priest's death, while Emily is of course ecstatic that she can once again let her imagination run wild and compose, pen fictional stories, her enforced break of having to limit herself to non fiction for much of Emily Climbs has actually been a godsend in many ways, as it also has made Emily's fiction writing less exaggerated, more realistic and believable, that Aunt Elizabeth's demands that her niece not write ANY fiction (while she was paying Emily's expenses) have actually made Emily Byrd Starr into a better and less overly emotional and exaggerated writer across the board.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 8, 2018
So happy to get to know Emily better. So eager to see where her story goes in the last book. LM Montgomery is a treasure. Her books are my happy place.
August 19, 2025
یک راه فرار جدید پیدا کردم، کتابهای مونتگمری و واقعا عجیبه که توی روزهای سخت روحی، توصیفات یک نویسنده از چندین سال پیش، میتونه تورو از مشکلاتت دور کنه... چطور کلمات میتونن اینقدر معجزه کنن؟
August 3, 2025
امیلی دختری شادابه که
کنارش میتونی زیبایی ستارههای توی آسمون رو ببینی
از دیدن طبیعت اطرافت شادشی
و پای صحبت آدمای مختلف بشینی
برای اون همه آدما به طور خاصی دوست داشتنی هستن مگر اونایی که به غرور ماریگونه اش لطمه بزنن.
دختری که هر وقت دلش میخواد بچه میشه و شیطنت میکنه اما درمواقع خاص مثل یک دختر بالغ رفتار میکنه.
و به قول خودش:
《در مهمانی موفقیت زندگی، من مهمان ناخوانده نخواهم بود، بلکه مهمان ویژه ام.》
کنارش میتونی زیبایی ستارههای توی آسمون رو ببینی
از دیدن طبیعت اطرافت شادشی
و پای صحبت آدمای مختلف بشینی
برای اون همه آدما به طور خاصی دوست داشتنی هستن مگر اونایی که به غرور ماریگونه اش لطمه بزنن.
دختری که هر وقت دلش میخواد بچه میشه و شیطنت میکنه اما درمواقع خاص مثل یک دختر بالغ رفتار میکنه.
و به قول خودش:
《در مهمانی موفقیت زندگی، من مهمان ناخوانده نخواهم بود، بلکه مهمان ویژه ام.》
August 7, 2025
7/2025 reread:
While rereading this I read in LMM's journal that she did not think this one was as good as the first volume, but I maintain that it is even better. The combination of Emily's diary entries and the chapters with a narrator who makes herself known makes for an exceptionally moving, humorous, and fascinating story. I relate to Emily so much. I could do without the enmity with Evelyn Blake, however. It feels rather forced, as if LMM thought Emily must have an enemy. But Evelyn adds little to the story.
***
2021 reread:
Emily's journal entries are my favorite parts of the book. I noticed this time, though, that Emily's voice changes drastically from the end of the first book to the beginning of this one. New Moon ends in "I am going to write a dairy." Then, in this one, suddenly there are no more misspellings, and the childlike tone is gone and replaced by a teenage one. Maybe more time passed than I realized between the books?
I realize more fully why I identify much more strongly with Emily than with Anne. Emily does not mind so much if people don't like her, while Anne must win everyone over, or at least try. Emily is okay with having a small circle of close friends, with going her own way regardless of whether people approve of her or not, and she allows herself to brood when she needs to. As an introvert, Emily is much closer to my personality, even though I wish I was more like Anne.
***
5 stars for being beautiful, inspiring, funny, magical.
1 star for being maddening-I desperately want to read the stories Emily writes! And the poems as well.
Somehow, I like this one even better than Emily of New Moon. I love the journal entries and-yes, even Emily's italics! I love her determination, her innocence that keeps her from seeing Dean is in love with her and waiting for her to grow up so he can show it, and most of all, I love her incessant 'scribbling'.
The part where Emily hides in the closet because she's wearing the hideous 'Mother Hubbard', and hears two malicious old ladies gossiping about her is funny and moving, especially when Emily goes upstairs and questions, honestly, whether what the women said was true. I like that in her, that she can face up to herself and recognize both her faults and strengths.
One thing I've noticed with the Emily series is that LMM doesn't use haunting, mystical last lines, like in some of the Anne books.
Anne of Avonlea: 'And over the river in purple durance the echoes bided their time.'
Anne of the Island: 'Over meadows where winds of hope and memory blew.'
Those lines just make me shiver with delight every time. And LMM doubted that she had crested the 'Alpine Path!'
To get back to Emily, the lack of last lines like those doesn't take away from her books at all. It's just an interesting contrast. The last lines in the Emily books seem more to reveal Emily's voice. The first one ends with, 'I am going to write a dairy, that it may be published when I die,' and the second one is, 'Perhaps Teddy was only shy!' Those ending sentences show Emily's autobiographic character, to me.
I like the almost-grown-up and adult Emily, whereas with Anne I felt a little sad when she was grown and had left her lively ramblings behind.
I love comparisons, but sometimes they can detract from the unique values of books I compare with each other.
While rereading this I read in LMM's journal that she did not think this one was as good as the first volume, but I maintain that it is even better. The combination of Emily's diary entries and the chapters with a narrator who makes herself known makes for an exceptionally moving, humorous, and fascinating story. I relate to Emily so much. I could do without the enmity with Evelyn Blake, however. It feels rather forced, as if LMM thought Emily must have an enemy. But Evelyn adds little to the story.
***
2021 reread:
Emily's journal entries are my favorite parts of the book. I noticed this time, though, that Emily's voice changes drastically from the end of the first book to the beginning of this one. New Moon ends in "I am going to write a dairy." Then, in this one, suddenly there are no more misspellings, and the childlike tone is gone and replaced by a teenage one. Maybe more time passed than I realized between the books?
I realize more fully why I identify much more strongly with Emily than with Anne. Emily does not mind so much if people don't like her, while Anne must win everyone over, or at least try. Emily is okay with having a small circle of close friends, with going her own way regardless of whether people approve of her or not, and she allows herself to brood when she needs to. As an introvert, Emily is much closer to my personality, even though I wish I was more like Anne.
***
5 stars for being beautiful, inspiring, funny, magical.
1 star for being maddening-I desperately want to read the stories Emily writes! And the poems as well.
Somehow, I like this one even better than Emily of New Moon. I love the journal entries and-yes, even Emily's italics! I love her determination, her innocence that keeps her from seeing Dean is in love with her and waiting for her to grow up so he can show it, and most of all, I love her incessant 'scribbling'.
The part where Emily hides in the closet because she's wearing the hideous 'Mother Hubbard', and hears two malicious old ladies gossiping about her is funny and moving, especially when Emily goes upstairs and questions, honestly, whether what the women said was true. I like that in her, that she can face up to herself and recognize both her faults and strengths.
One thing I've noticed with the Emily series is that LMM doesn't use haunting, mystical last lines, like in some of the Anne books.
Anne of Avonlea: 'And over the river in purple durance the echoes bided their time.'
Anne of the Island: 'Over meadows where winds of hope and memory blew.'
Those lines just make me shiver with delight every time. And LMM doubted that she had crested the 'Alpine Path!'
To get back to Emily, the lack of last lines like those doesn't take away from her books at all. It's just an interesting contrast. The last lines in the Emily books seem more to reveal Emily's voice. The first one ends with, 'I am going to write a dairy, that it may be published when I die,' and the second one is, 'Perhaps Teddy was only shy!' Those ending sentences show Emily's autobiographic character, to me.
I like the almost-grown-up and adult Emily, whereas with Anne I felt a little sad when she was grown and had left her lively ramblings behind.
I love comparisons, but sometimes they can detract from the unique values of books I compare with each other.
November 17, 2016
This continuation of Emily's story was just as heart-warming and enchanting as the first book. Reading about Emily makes me feel happy, cozy and safe all at the same time, and I loved how in this sequel the setting actually changes as Emily grows up (which was not the case with the Anne of Green Gables series). The ending was a little bit surprising, because Emily made an unwise decision in my opinion. Nevertheless, I'm excited to pick up the last installment of this series very soon.
December 28, 2019
4.5 stars
My rating is a little lower than the first book in the trilogy but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy this book. It was really neat seeing Perry, Teddy, Ilsa, and Emily in a bigger city on Prince Edward Island to attend high school. They’ve all grown and matured a lot. It’s impossible to doubt that they’ll all do great things in their lives. I do hope they don’t drift apart as most friends do when they leave high school do but to pursue their dreams it might have to happen... It’s a terrible reality that I can’t bear to think will happen to them all. One has to appreciate that Mrs. Montgomery brought and kept a certain realistic view in her books. Some authors tended to avoid such heavy topics in children’s and YA books back in the early 1900s.
There were two certain issues that affected my enjoyment of this story. The first issue is that I was expecting a little more romance in this book than what actually occurred. The boys barely appeared in this book! Majority of time it only seemed to happen every once in a while and always ended in a scandal. There were a few precious moments that were taken from these events that were beautiful. Just when I hoped something more would happen someone or some other event would spoil the moment. 😡It was freaking frustrating! 😤 I’m told the 3rd book has more romance in it but it saddens me that there didn’t seem to be a deepening of friendships among all the friends like we saw with Ilsa and Emily.
My last issue is the ignorance Emily has when it comes to her friendship with Mr. Priest. 🙄 Emily is supposed to be smart yet she can’t figure out that Mr. Priest wants her as more than just a friend. Old Kelly and Mr. Priest even told her point blank in different ways yet she still doesn’t see it. 🤦♀️ Some call it the naivety of youth or the fact that she hasn’t fully experienced romance in books or real-life, but this doesn’t seem like a good enough answer. She’s experienced romantic advances with Perry and her cousin both subtle and brazen. Those experiences with the intuition and smarts she has make it seem illogical that she doesn’t see the clues laid before her. I get that this will all probably come to a head in the last book, but I wish Emily hadn’t been made such a dumb intelligent person.
Even with these issues the book is still charming and adventures are had by new and old characters. (Aunt Ruth is one of the new characters I can’t help but pray for those she dislikes or who try to mess with her family. She’s an old battle axe for sure.) It was delightful being in the world Mrs. Montgomery has created. I still wish that I could visit there and meet the characters even though I know they wouldn’t be alive today. It’s a fitting enough sequel that is worth a read. Just beware fellow readers that some characters from the 1st book don’t appear as much as in the first, so you may face some disappointment in that fact.
My rating is a little lower than the first book in the trilogy but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy this book. It was really neat seeing Perry, Teddy, Ilsa, and Emily in a bigger city on Prince Edward Island to attend high school. They’ve all grown and matured a lot. It’s impossible to doubt that they’ll all do great things in their lives. I do hope they don’t drift apart as most friends do when they leave high school do but to pursue their dreams it might have to happen... It’s a terrible reality that I can’t bear to think will happen to them all. One has to appreciate that Mrs. Montgomery brought and kept a certain realistic view in her books. Some authors tended to avoid such heavy topics in children’s and YA books back in the early 1900s.
There were two certain issues that affected my enjoyment of this story. The first issue is that I was expecting a little more romance in this book than what actually occurred. The boys barely appeared in this book! Majority of time it only seemed to happen every once in a while and always ended in a scandal. There were a few precious moments that were taken from these events that were beautiful. Just when I hoped something more would happen someone or some other event would spoil the moment. 😡It was freaking frustrating! 😤 I’m told the 3rd book has more romance in it but it saddens me that there didn’t seem to be a deepening of friendships among all the friends like we saw with Ilsa and Emily.
My last issue is the ignorance Emily has when it comes to her friendship with Mr. Priest. 🙄 Emily is supposed to be smart yet she can’t figure out that Mr. Priest wants her as more than just a friend. Old Kelly and Mr. Priest even told her point blank in different ways yet she still doesn’t see it. 🤦♀️ Some call it the naivety of youth or the fact that she hasn’t fully experienced romance in books or real-life, but this doesn’t seem like a good enough answer. She’s experienced romantic advances with Perry and her cousin both subtle and brazen. Those experiences with the intuition and smarts she has make it seem illogical that she doesn’t see the clues laid before her. I get that this will all probably come to a head in the last book, but I wish Emily hadn’t been made such a dumb intelligent person.
Even with these issues the book is still charming and adventures are had by new and old characters. (Aunt Ruth is one of the new characters I can’t help but pray for those she dislikes or who try to mess with her family. She’s an old battle axe for sure.) It was delightful being in the world Mrs. Montgomery has created. I still wish that I could visit there and meet the characters even though I know they wouldn’t be alive today. It’s a fitting enough sequel that is worth a read. Just beware fellow readers that some characters from the 1st book don’t appear as much as in the first, so you may face some disappointment in that fact.
January 3, 2021
I wonder if I picked this trilogy up too late. I've reached the point where I find Anne just a touch annoying. (And I've always been an Anne.) So I assume I'd have had more sympathy for Emily if I read her, say, in middle school.
As it is, I found the episodic nature of this book slow and hard to get invested in. Emily or one of her friends gets embroiled in a scandal. Emily's family reproves her. She gives them the Murray look. They give in. Rinse and repeat.
The scene with the dog was hilarious. But, frankly, I don't understand Emily's 'I belong at New Moon' shtick.
As it is, I found the episodic nature of this book slow and hard to get invested in. Emily or one of her friends gets embroiled in a scandal. Emily's family reproves her. She gives them the Murray look. They give in. Rinse and repeat.
The scene with the dog was hilarious. But, frankly, I don't understand Emily's 'I belong at New Moon' shtick.
May 5, 2021
آه امیلی هفده سالهی من...
دوستت دارم. ستایشت میکنم. تو همینطور داری در مسیر آلپ پیش میروی و موفق هم میشوی. تو، ای ستاره!
دوستت دارم. ستایشت میکنم. تو همینطور داری در مسیر آلپ پیش میروی و موفق هم میشوی. تو، ای ستاره!
November 1, 2025
جلد قبلی رو بیشتر دوست داشتم، امیدوارم جلد آخر به اوج برگرده.
February 17, 2021
Rereading this for the tenth or twelfth time, I enjoy it just as much as ever!
Emily is growing up, honing her writing skills, and getting an education at Shrewsbury high school along with her friends, Ilse, Perry, and Teddy. She gets into innocent mischief, makes honest mistakes, and generally has little adventures around PEI.
I love the character development that Emily has in this book. There are some surprising developments with her family clan, the Murrays, as they begin to recognize that she's no longer a little girl that they can bully.
I love all the weird and funny adventures that Emily has while she is hanging out with Ilse. Their friendship is so wild and true and beautiful. It's a delight to read about two girls being such close friends, sharing secrets and dreams.
There is only one storyline in the book that I don't like, and that is Dean Priest. He's basically a pedophile, and he creeps me out.
Emily is growing up, honing her writing skills, and getting an education at Shrewsbury high school along with her friends, Ilse, Perry, and Teddy. She gets into innocent mischief, makes honest mistakes, and generally has little adventures around PEI.
I love the character development that Emily has in this book. There are some surprising developments with her family clan, the Murrays, as they begin to recognize that she's no longer a little girl that they can bully.
I love all the weird and funny adventures that Emily has while she is hanging out with Ilse. Their friendship is so wild and true and beautiful. It's a delight to read about two girls being such close friends, sharing secrets and dreams.
There is only one storyline in the book that I don't like, and that is Dean Priest. He's basically a pedophile, and he creeps me out.
August 11, 2009
The Emily books have been with me for a longer time than most people I know. I have no idea how many times I've read them, and I could probably quote many passages from them by heart. How can one review such books, then? I won't try. I will only say that these books delight me to no end, and Emily Climbs is perhaps my favourite of the trilogy, because of the youthful dreaminess and enthusiasm of Emily, because it has so much about her writing and I don't know for what other reasons. Montgomery's writing is beautiful and charming, she can make her characters so real and alive, and her books give me great joy.
September 30, 2025
*** بار اول***
به طرز ترسناکی حس میکنم این کتاب رو حتی از آنه شرلی بیشتر دوست دارم. و چقدر خوبه! چقدر خوبه که همچین کتابهایی نوشته شدن... بی صبرانه منتظر شروع کتاب سوم هستم!
*** بار دوم ***
جادو.
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*** بار دوم ***
جادو.
July 8, 2019
Emily Byrd Starr is a delightful character. She’s charming and intelligent and fiercely talented, with a penchant for finding herself in embarrassing situations that keeps her from feeling inhumanly perfect. She marches to the beat of her own drum in a way that is still uncommon, and her deep appreciation for the beauty of nature resonates with me. I adore her on the surface, but I think she and I have developed a relationship that will never grow beyond friendly acquaintances. As much as I try to connect with her on a deeper level, we can’t seem to become the bosom buddies that Anne Shirley and I are. Which is wild, because I actually have more in common with Emily than I do with Anne. I guess there just isn’t room in my heart for both of them.
This second installment in the trilogy is about Emily’s adolescence and young womanhood. She finds herself departing from New Moon (during the week, anyway, since she still comes home on weekends) and attending high school, which was more closely related to the undergrad colleges of today than our present high schools. The aunt she is living with is even harsher than Aunt Elizabeth, watching Emily’s every move and waiting to pounce on any act of which she doesn’t approve. Slowly but surely, Emily’s writing takes off, proving to her family and friends that her “scribblings” have merit.
Though I can’t manage to love Emily as much as I do Anne, this series has more of Montgomery’s voice and presence than any of the Anne of Green Gables books. I love how she inserts her own opinions as a narrator in among Emily’s thoughts and deeds. It’s an adorable addition and one of the highlights of the series for me. Her descriptions of nature are also second to none, and are often breathtakingly beautiful even though they’re merely words on a page. She also includes snippets of amazing writing advice that I plan to apply to my own writing. To the best of my ability, anyway.
Don’t think that I in any way dislike this book or series because I keep comparing Emily to Anne. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Emily series is delightful and wholesome and pure in a way that’s incredibly inviting, and Emily is a character whom you can’t help but root for with your whole heart. I truly believe that, had I met Emily first, Anne couldn’t have found her way into my heart past the delight that is Emily Byrd Starr. It was mere happenstance that I fell in love with Anne before I had the pleasure of meeting Emily. But I still deeply desire to see how Emily’s life turns out, and I feel more invested in that outcome than I did regarding the Anne books, so that’s something. I can also unequivocally see myself rereading this series when I need something comfortably lovely to take me away from the modern world.
“Well, it all comes to this, there's no use trying to live in other people's opinions. The only thing to do is to live in your own.”
This second installment in the trilogy is about Emily’s adolescence and young womanhood. She finds herself departing from New Moon (during the week, anyway, since she still comes home on weekends) and attending high school, which was more closely related to the undergrad colleges of today than our present high schools. The aunt she is living with is even harsher than Aunt Elizabeth, watching Emily’s every move and waiting to pounce on any act of which she doesn’t approve. Slowly but surely, Emily’s writing takes off, proving to her family and friends that her “scribblings” have merit.
"The discovery of beautiful and interesting words always gives me joy. When I find a new, charming word I exult as a jewel-seeker and am unhappy until I've set it in a sentence.”
Though I can’t manage to love Emily as much as I do Anne, this series has more of Montgomery’s voice and presence than any of the Anne of Green Gables books. I love how she inserts her own opinions as a narrator in among Emily’s thoughts and deeds. It’s an adorable addition and one of the highlights of the series for me. Her descriptions of nature are also second to none, and are often breathtakingly beautiful even though they’re merely words on a page. She also includes snippets of amazing writing advice that I plan to apply to my own writing. To the best of my ability, anyway.
"You'll never write anything that really satisfies you though it may satisfy other people.”
Don’t think that I in any way dislike this book or series because I keep comparing Emily to Anne. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Emily series is delightful and wholesome and pure in a way that’s incredibly inviting, and Emily is a character whom you can’t help but root for with your whole heart. I truly believe that, had I met Emily first, Anne couldn’t have found her way into my heart past the delight that is Emily Byrd Starr. It was mere happenstance that I fell in love with Anne before I had the pleasure of meeting Emily. But I still deeply desire to see how Emily’s life turns out, and I feel more invested in that outcome than I did regarding the Anne books, so that’s something. I can also unequivocally see myself rereading this series when I need something comfortably lovely to take me away from the modern world.
July 23, 2015
I like the Emily books for their exploration of women making it as professional writers. However, the problem with the Emily trilogy is that the characters don't feel real in the way those in the Anne series do - they don't come to life and leap off the page with vivacity. Ilse, Teddy and Perry never feel as fully fleshed as characters like Diana, Gilbert and Marilla. Plus, Dean Priest gets creepier with every book.
October 9, 2023
Oh, what a book. I already know my heart will be ripped from my chest when I finish these books (only one more left 🥲) this had slightly less of the childish charm that I loved so much in the first one as Emily grows up and I was sad how much was glossed over for the first half of the book, but I still enjoyed myself and there were plenty of shenanigans. I think her friend Ilsa might be one of my favorite book characters to date. She had me laughing so many times. I definitely wanted more of Teddy and Perry. We got a little more of Perry near the end but almost none of Teddy 😒
June 6, 2025
How is anyone reading this and not out of their mind creeped out by the Dean/Emily thing? Like…. He’s 35 and she’s 12 when they meet and it’s clear that losing her dad and that Dean went to college with her dad has given her an unhealthy admiration/love for him and he’s an absolute creep/ped. I just scrolled through previous reviews and no one has pointed this out. Wth?
Emily’s family is constantly telling her what is appropriate and making rules like she can’t write fiction and she can’t act in a play and she can’t go out in the fog…. But they don’t put up any fuss at all about a now 15/16 year old hanging out alone with an almost 40 year old that has made comments about wanting to marry/kiss her.
The chapter Driftwood made me so uncomfortable and pissed. Dean (who I now have no sympathy for being called Jarback) is a straight up ped. He’s 40 and Emily is 16….. again I ask—- how is this relationship not filling up the reviews???
Like I have other thoughts about this book but it’s hard to comment on those when this seems like such a glaring issue…..
To mention something other than *that*… I feel like a lot of the occurrences are very similar to the happenings in Anne of Green Gables. It’s hard to not feel like she didn’t really explore much new except for the relationship between Emily and Ilsa and Emily and Teddy.
I like that Emily doesn’t run from Teddy (like Anne did from Gilbert) and I like that Ilsa is a completely different character from Diana. I also think Perry is a wonderful character.
The coldness between Emily and Ilsa when they have their fight was expertly described and put something so difficult to describe into perfect description.
Emily’s family is constantly telling her what is appropriate and making rules like she can’t write fiction and she can’t act in a play and she can’t go out in the fog…. But they don’t put up any fuss at all about a now 15/16 year old hanging out alone with an almost 40 year old that has made comments about wanting to marry/kiss her.
The chapter Driftwood made me so uncomfortable and pissed. Dean (who I now have no sympathy for being called Jarback) is a straight up ped. He’s 40 and Emily is 16….. again I ask—- how is this relationship not filling up the reviews???
Like I have other thoughts about this book but it’s hard to comment on those when this seems like such a glaring issue…..
To mention something other than *that*… I feel like a lot of the occurrences are very similar to the happenings in Anne of Green Gables. It’s hard to not feel like she didn’t really explore much new except for the relationship between Emily and Ilsa and Emily and Teddy.
I like that Emily doesn’t run from Teddy (like Anne did from Gilbert) and I like that Ilsa is a completely different character from Diana. I also think Perry is a wonderful character.
The coldness between Emily and Ilsa when they have their fight was expertly described and put something so difficult to describe into perfect description.
February 25, 2021
Delightful story of teen Emily, finding her voice and finding her way. A really sweet book, very enjoyable.
October 24, 2025
I found the three Emily books, tattered hardcovers, in the discard pile in a library on Martha's Vineyard when I was 13, and instantly adored them. It was not for about 15 years that they were reissued in paperback by Bantam, so were not widely known in the US at that point.
This one, which follows Emily through high school and adolescence, is fascinating in its glimpse of school and social life.
https://perfectretort.blogspot.com/20...
This one, which follows Emily through high school and adolescence, is fascinating in its glimpse of school and social life.
https://perfectretort.blogspot.com/20...
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