goodreads | Rainbow Valley - L.M. Montgomery

Title: Rainbow Valley
Author: L.M. Montgomery
Genre: Classic
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: 225
Date read: May, 2011

Anne Shirley is grown up, has married her beloved Gilbert and now is the mother of six mischievous children.

These boys and girls discover a special place all their own, but they never dream of what will happen when the strangest family moves into an old nearby mansion. The Meredith clan is two boys and two girls, with minister father but no mother -- and a runaway girl named Mary Vance. Soon the Meredith kids join Anne's children in their private hideout to carry out their plans to save Mary from the orphanage, to help the lonely minister find happiness, and to keep a pet rooster from the soup pot. There's always an adventure brewing in the sun-dappled world of Rainbow Valley.

I think it's a bit of a misnomer to call this an "Anne"-book. She plays a very small part in it, and her kids only a tiny bit bigger. Instead, the main characters are the Meredith-children. It's still a charming book, and I still hugely enjoyed it - but I did miss Anne.

Having read LMM's journals, I find it interesting that LMM seems to portray love in a somewhat more cynical light in her later books - as shown by the promise of Ellen and Rosemary West here.