Emily Starr Trilogy

Emily #1-3

by L.M. Montgomery

Montgomery, L. M.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Young Adult, Historical Fiction, Childrens, Romance, Historical

Paperback

First published January 1, 1927

About the author

Lucy 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.

Reviews

[Vilja · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rakas, rakas kirja. Montgomery on kaikkien aikojen suosikkikirjailijoitani ja hänen Anna- ja Runotyttö-sarjoillaan on minulle valtava nostalginen merkitys. Tulen aina rakastamaan näitä koko sydämestäni. Runotytöistä suosikkini on toinen, Runotyttö maineen polulla, mutta kaikki ovat ihastuttavia yhtäkaikki. Annojen ja Runotyttöjen vertailussa en mene sanomaan toista paremmaksi, mutta Annat ovat minulle vielä näitäkin tärkeämpiä. On ollut ihanaa lukea rakkaita tyttökirjoja uudelleen ja tulen varmasti palaamaan niiden pariin vielä uudelleen!

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Emily's Quest" is the final book in the trilogy and is absolutely delightful. The depth of characterisation is very impressive as are the wonderful, atmospheric descriptive passages. Plotting is skilful and interest never flags.

If you enjoy a crafted dose of sentiment this book is a winner.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Luettu 3. kerran elokuussa 2016)

Rakastuin Runotyttöön kun luin sen ensimmäisen kerran 9-vuotiaana. Nyt, 8 vuotta myöhemmin, rakastan sitä edelleen ja se on yksi kaikkien aikojen lempikirjojani. Voisin sanoa, että tämä on tärkein sarja minulle, enkä osaa edes ilmaista kuinka paljon Runotyttö-sarja minulle merkitsee. Edellisestä lukukerrasta oli kulunut useita vuosia, joten oli ihana palata tämän pariin. Olen myös aika varma, että Teddy oli ensimmäinen book crushini♥

[Sariah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review is actually for all three Emily books (Emily of New Moon, Emily Climbs, and Emily's Quest) because when I clicked on the book that matches my book, it only came up with with the boxed set and I haven't yet figured out how to make the right changes. Anyway, on to my review...

My mom brought me my old copies of the Emily series recently and I couldn't be happier. Rereading the series was like meeting up with an old friend that you haven't seen in a good 15 to 20 years and nothing has changed. If anything, that friend has become even lovelier than before. While not as read as Anne of Green Gables, Emily is a timeless character that every girl finds herself identifying with. I always loved Emily and her love of writing. Teddy comes in not far after Gilbert Blythe (who is number 1) in my literary crush list (Sorry, Edward Cullen. You're still in my top five.). I love all of Emily's adventures and antics. All of her heartaches and headaches. All of her italics!!! I wish I had daughters to share Emily with.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adore this series. It certainly rivals the Anne books. Emily is much different than Anne, and I think that's part of why this series works so well. From her beginnings in a house with her dying father, to living at New Moon with her Aunts, then on to college with another Aunt, then finally a woman trying to figure out how a childhood romance could move to an adult one. I loved reading about her journey and seeing how being honest about what you want in life can actually help get you what you want.

[Liisa | kirjavuori · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rakkain, rakkain Emilia!

Niin raikasta, hurmaavaa, ihastuttavaa tyttöyttä ja runoutta. Ja vuodenaikoja, varsinkin keväitä, täydellisiä luontokuvauksia ja hetkiä. Leimahdus, moneen kertaan. Ja rakkautta! Niin dramaattista että hihityttää, niin pyhää että itkettää. Voi Emilia, ihana traaginen sankaritar, ihana pikkutyttö leikkituvassaan, ihana teini hekumoimassa paria sanaa hautausmaalla. Voih!

[Melani · Rating 4 out of 5]

For as much as I love the Anne of Green Gable novels, I think this may be the first time I’ve made it all the way through the Emily of New Moon books. I know I attempted them around the same time I read the Anne books, but I don’t think I finished them. I don’t have a memory of finishing them anyway. So yes, I decided it was time to correct that.

Thes books are about young, orphaned Emily Starr who wants to be a writer when she grows up and how she deals with her family, ambition, and love as she ‘climbs the alpine path’. I can’t really talk about these books without comparing them to the Anne books. These are good books, they deserve to stand on their own, and I really enjoyed them, but at the same time it’s very hard not to compare them to the Anne books because they share so many similarities. So let’s talk about them.

In many ways Anne and Emily are very similar, they both belong to the group I call ‘Montgomery’s special people’-i.e. the dreamers and poets of the world. They’re both orphans sent to live with people who don’t really want them but who they manage to win over. They both have romances with a childhood friend. They’re both writers. Despite these similarities they are quite different people and it’s those differences that causes the Anne/Emily divide. For example, some people claim that the Emily books are more progressive because Anne gives up her writing and Emily never does. On the other hand, Anne is more of a people person and has a stronger streak of mischief running through her character. For the record, I come down on the Anne side of that divide but I do like the Emily books.

One thing before I leave the Anne books behind, I think the main difference between Anne and Emily comes down to how and when they were orphaned. Anne was orphaned as a baby, never knew her parents, and never had any family at all. Emily wasn’t fully orphaned until she was 8, she grew up knowing that her father loved her without reservation and even after his death she still had a family. Despite her conflicts with the various members of the Murray clan, she still had a family she belonged to. This does two things: first, Emily never had to learn how to please people the way that Anne did, and so she’s a bit more willful and doesn’t have Anne’s sociable nature. The other thing it does is change the goals of the two characters. Anne never had a family to belong to, so when she finally marries Gilbert and has children it fills that gap in her life, and that’s why I think she gives up her writing. For Anne the gap she needed to fill was the lack of family, and Emily never had that. Emily had a family, she needed to prove herself to them, and so getting married and settling down were never her goals.

If I have one problem with the books it’s in the character of Dean Priest. I completely despise this character, he’s the worst. When we first meet him at the end of Emily of New Moon he’s a 32 (at least, likely older) year old man who decides that he’s going to marry a 12 year old Emily. I’m pretty sure that that was creepy even in 1923 when the book was published. It’s gross, and Dean never really redeems himself from that moment. He’s a controlling, stalkery, Nice Guy who refuses to take Emily’s ambition seriously because it thinks that her ambition is his competition. And yet, he’s also one of Montgomery’s ‘special people’, so there’s this contradiction to how he’s presented. On the one had he’s all those icky things, but on the other he’s someone who can relate to Emily and her imagination. I can reconcile him, because I think Montgomery intended him to be a kind of warning, not all people who we relate to have our best interests at heart. His betrayal of Emily in Emily’s Quest is one of the most heartbreaking moments, in great part because Emily trusts him so much when she shouldn’t. However, as a warning character he joins the troublesome category of ‘evil disabled person in literature’.

[Eliza Crewe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a reread for me, long overdue. I loved the first two books in the series--they're all about her dreams and aspirations and friendships and "scrapes" and interesting characters. The third book is mostly her sitting about pining over Teddy, so not nearly as good, but I love the first two enough to make up for it.

[Abbe · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember loving this series more than the Anne series when I was young. Reading it as an adult is definitely different if not a little nostalgia-shattering. Emily's story was always darker than Anne's starting with her father dying. Her Aunt Elizabeth (the Marilla figure) was much harder to like than Marilla and she took at least two of the books to come around to being somewhat likable. Uncle Jimmy (who was "simple" but actually one of the wisest characters) was always a favorite of mine, as well as her teacher Mr. Carpenter. I loved Ilse, her wild best friend in the first book but later on her selfishness overshadows any of her sweet quirks. One of the biggest differences reading this as an adlt is the distinct feeling of unease surrounding her "friend" Dean. They meet when Emily is only 12 and he is 24 years older than her, the age of her deceased father. It would have been different if he had only been a father-figure, mentor to her but from the beginning he said he would "wait for her" and was incredibly creepy. Later on he becomes even worse, jealous of her other friends (Teddy specifically) but also of her writing which he pretended was terrible because he didn't want it to "take her away from him." One thing I always found very interesting was Emily's second-sight which appears in every book. I thought the last book was drawn out too long and the last third was just Emily and Teddy pining for each other for years but not TALKING anything out with each other which was annoying. Yes, there was one big misunderstanding but that wouldn't have happened if they had just been honest with each other anyway. The last scene where they resolve things seemed very rushed after all that excessive pining and ended rather abruptly. I still love Emily though and there were several funny scenes.

[Anna Zehr · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compelling character. I had forgotten how grounded in everyday life (cooking, housekeeping) these books are.

[Miquela · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a 2.5 star review. The kids and I read it together and they wanted me to stop about halfway or three-quarters of the way through the second volume. I don't want to give spoilers, but there were some relationships that didn't go over very well with us. There was way too much romance for my kiddos.

[Petra · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a bind up of all the three Emily of New Moon books and I will forever love this exact copy of this because it gave me so much comfort first time I picked it up years ago. I will also have a soft, yearning spot for this series forever. Controversial opinion but I do love Emily even more than Anne. I love the passion both Emily and Anne have for life and beauty of it but I will always relate to Emily in special way. There is a lot more melancholic and sad undertones in this and in many ways, it feels truer to life to me. I agree that the last book can be a pain in the ass but I wouldn't love it in any other way; Emily needed to go through all those things to get her happy ending. This reread was very sentimental but I ended up equally loving it as much as I did in the past.

[Linda Irvine · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Flash" is real. I still can't decide who was a better friend to me: Anne or Emily. I recently re-read the entire Emily series. It was even better than I remembered as a girl.

[Leah Klint · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sweet and a tad frustrating

I loved Emily the budding writer in these books. I didn't love that most of the love story was about miscommunication and no one trying clear that up. Overall, great. I saw glimpses of Anne with an e but it was really it's own story.

[Eeva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ihana nuoren tytön kasvutarina, jonka ensimmäisen kerran olen lukenut 11-vuotiaana ja nyt uudelleen 21-vuotiaana. Tarina piti otteessaan loppuun asti yhtä lumoavana kuin lapsena. Ainoa ero tässä lukukerrassa oli Dean Priestin hahmon näkeminen omistavana, kyynisenä ja karmivana, eikä ollenkaan niin romanttisena kuin hän tuntui olevan 10 vuotta sitten.

[Annie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still such a relatable and mesmerizing story. absolutely loved the journey it took me on.

[Bess · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got this box set from my mom for my 11th Christmas present, and stayed up late many nights with a flashlight under the covers with tears on my cheeks reading Emily's adventures. Could I help but love L.M.Montgomery's literary works forever? This really is a charming tale of familial love, friendship, adventure, heartache, and growing up -- deep set with a love of nature and old-fashioned things. I want to plant columbines in my garden as an adult b/c I read this book as a child. The first books one reads, loves, lives vicariously through the characters, shape our lives and personalities such that we cannot know where the character's childhood ends and our own begins. Emily is part of my psyche, as is Anne and the lively Tolkien characters from LOTR series. I lived more fully in those literary worlds as a young teen than in my "real life", so they shaped my world-view and ideals of friendship and love forever.

[Barbarac · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started this book over a year ago and out it down. I just wasn't getting into it. I loved Anne of Green Gables but that was 30 years ago. So this year I decided to give the audio version a try. Only the first book was available in audio, but boy, it was enough. It got me hooked. I went and read the other 2 right away. I liked the trilogy, but Emily was no Anne for me. And most importantly, the characters of Marilla, Matthew we're sorely missed here.
And, unfortunately, I found the character of Dean Priest completely creepy. I get it that it was different times, but he was preying on Emily when she was 14 and he was 34. And that's how I saw it. Frankly I found him and his jealousies completely unlikeable.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read all 3 of these books when I was 10 yrs old (or so). I fell in love with them. I read them and re-read them until I could almost recite them verbatim!

You could have fooled me that this was not the true account of a little girl named Emily and her friend Teddy. I wanted her to be a real woman. It was quite the disappointment when I realized she was only a character in Ms. Montgomery's imagination.

Ahhh.. such are the thoughts of a preteen.

If you're looking for great books for a younger gal, I highly recommend them. And if you haven't read them yourself -- you might be surprised how much you love them too.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this series because my friend Leslie, who has great taste, loves it. I don't know that I loved it like she does, but I did like it a lot (I read the third book in one day, for pity's sake) and fans of L.M. Montgomery certainly shouldn't miss it. I did like that, unlike that Anne books, the entire series focuses on Emily and her friends and family. My great disappointment with the Anne books was that Anne becomes a background character in the last few books.

[Amara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just reread these on vacation too. Sappy and sentimental I know, but I like what I like. Also I've got to give the author kudos for great descriptions of beauty in nature. I always skipped these in the Anne books when I was a kid ("oh no she's talking about sunsets again"), but now I like them. In the Emily books they're more pronounced because Emily is supposed to be a writer and trying her hand at description.

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Emily series always appealed to me more than Anne. Anne is impossibly cheerful and resilient while Emily is complex, often tortured and goes through the valleys and peaks most young people do coming into their own.

This series is darker than Anne and has some story lines that should be talked through with a younger reader.

Tellingly, I still have the copy I received from my parents or grandparents around age 11 or 12.

[Sue · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like Emily. I loved Anne Shirley, but I found Emily annoying and worse than that all the secondary characters are annoying too. There is no bosom kindred friend. The guys interested in Emily are creepy and worse of all is the older cousin. The last book in the trilogy is the worse. I know I am not the intended audience for this book but at age 12 I would have rather spent my time reading about Anne Shirley or Francie Nolan or even Nancy Drew.

[Megan Doney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part of me likes these books even more than the Anne books. And I love the Anne books. But there's a darkness to the Emily stories that isn't in the Anne books, and that gives them an edge and dimension that Anne lacks.

[Debbie Lunsford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took me back to my Anne of Green Gables days . . . my husband knew I loved it because I was audibly reacting constantly . . . !

[Rosa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Got better as it went on. The only one I found it a real chore to get through was the first book in the trilogy, Emily of New Moon, and I think that's because, despite how great of a writer L.M. Montgomery is, all of her child characters feel very similar to me. And that's not just because they're pretty much all from P.E.I. They're also all Presbyterian, they're all really intelligent in some respects, (yet somehow rather dumb about deeper meanings of Scripture), and all of them very poetic about nature. And while those are fun attributes, they feel very interchangeable as characters.

But when said characters start to become teens and adults, they tend to interest me more. To be honest, my review for the first book could be summed up as follows: "I've never really cared much for children, and Emily Starr made me detest them even more."

But Emily's struggles to become a writer; the fact that she works *hard* at it in a way that most of Montgomery's characters don't need to endeared her to me as she got older because I found that a lot more relatable. I like the fact that her main mentor, Mr. Carpenter, does not mince words with her. He tells her constantly that she's got the natural talent, but that's not enough, and he just goes through her work saying things like, "You've got one good line there, but the rest is crap," "You spend too much time romanticizing the seasons," "The title of this is so bad that I won't read the rest of it," etc. was SO refreshing. So many books with young girls as "natural writers" neglect the reality of having to hone those skills and breaking bad writing habits. Mr. Carpenter was a gift to Emily Starr, both as a series and as a character, because she actually listened to him and learned from him and she did become a much better writer because of him.

And I enjoyed the angst of the final book. I read a lot of fanfiction, and Emily's Quest feels a lot like an angstier fanfiction. The only downside is that there's not a particularly good payoff for all the angst you're made to read through. Montgomery wrote a miscommunication fanfiction wherein all it would take is one conversation to clear it up, and then just let the miscommunication stand for a full decade and threw the characters together in the last four pages with a three paragraph long conversation. And it doesn't feel very rewarding to the reader (though I would argue the characters didn't really deserve any better at that point.)

So, an okay read. Not as good as the Anne of Green Gables books as a whole, but an okay series to end in my Montgomery novels read through. (Now I only have her standalone short stories to go.)

[Sarah Mensinga · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delightful. Although it took me a little while to get into this trilogy, for as much as I love Lucy Maud Montgomery's writing, she does have a tendency to pen many wordy passages where someone is "drinking in the rapturous beauty of nature" (or whatnot) which isn't really my favorite type of storytelling. However, I know that's really a result of this being a classic novel reflecting the style of writing popular at the time. The plot itself and the characters are wonderfully relatable and enjoyable. I sometimes find myself impatient with stories about writers (for they seem to stumble into grand success after only one or two failures, and as a writer, I know that's not how it usually works) but Emily's career path definitely isn't a smooth one. I also really appreciated the nuance in her romantic storyline. If I had one complaint, it's that for all the gentle pacing, when we finally reach the story's big resolution, the last book wraps up so quickly. I wish L.M. had given us just a bit more time to enjoy Emily's ever after.

[Katie Risor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Emily's story is the best representation I've encountered of what it's like to pursue a creative career.

One can't help but compare Emily to Anne, and I believe Emily is like an uncensored, unromanticized version of Anne. Themes that Anne hints at are fully in the open with Emily. While Montgomerrys love of nature, romance, and fairy tale super-natural still come through, Emily is more affected by real life hardships than Anne. Where Anne gets into scrapes, Emily has misunderstandings that cause the very real consequence of damage to her reputation in a small town. Where Anne's quirks make her loved, Emily is misunderstood and bullied before finding acceptance in her group of misfit artist friends.

There are even more interesting and in depth themes in these books I could write essays about, and as usual with Montgomerry, all the characters are wonderfully unique and real. If you like Anne, please read these books!

[Serenity Bohon · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you like the Anne of Green Gables series, you really should give this one a try. It's as delightful with a little more tang. It's more autobiographical—Emily writes things in her journal that L.M. Montgomery originally wrote in her own. Emily is also an aspiring writer who wants to climb "the alpine path" more than anything. She has a number of rejections and small successes along the way, always falling back on the truth that she must write whether she ever succeeds or not. It's deeply relatable if you happen to be similarly afflicted. Like all good Montgomery novels, the love interest is swoon-worthy, and all ends as it should—of course with significant trouble and misunderstanding before you get there. It's a many-time re-read for me and hits almost the perfect spot every time.

[Mina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found these books very charming and I'm surprised I haven't read them before. Emily is a very likable character and I enjoyed almost all of the other characters too. I found Emily's relationship with Dean Priest extremely disturbing on many counts (most obvious being the 24 year age gap). But otherwise, it was everything an L.M. Montgomery book should be—heartwarming, wholesome, and beautifully written.