Summary from GoodReads:

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

My Review:

My memory of Anne of Windy Poplars is.. non-existent.  It’s been so long since I’ve read the books and I see the PBS movies (which are wonderful in their own right) once or twice throughout the year, so it’s easy to forget that Anne of Avonlea (the movie edition) is a mix-match of several books in the series.

In Anne of Windy Poplars the dreaded Pringles make their appearance.  And it’s oh so much more than the movie shows.  They are so dreadful, each and every one of them, but everything else is an absolute delight.  Windy Poplars, Rebecca Dew, Little Elizabeth and most of all – a character we rarely get to see in the book, Gilbert Blythe.

Wait, how can Gilbert be so wonderful? He’s hardly in the book!  I’ll tell you why – because this book shows the reader just how beautiful love letters can be.

A good portion of Anne of Windy Poplars is composed of Anne’s letters to “her dearest of dears” and they are so tender and sweet and filled with so much news and juicy tidbits and sweetness (with just the right amount of “pages omitted”) that it set the romantic in me a-fluttering.  Anne is learning how to be in love, something we see all too rarely in girls literature today.  She has to be patient, to wait to make a life with the one her heart has chosen, but she does it so sweetly it’s impossible not to feel the excitement.  Romance doesn’t need to be rushed.  One doesn’t need to spend all of ones time before the wedding crushed up against his or her chosen.  Anne learns that absence sweetens the deal and her dreams grow because of it.  And, in the process, sets aside a beautiful history to share with her own children.

Today we write emails and tweet to one another and love letters such as those in this book are a thing of the past.  But they don’t have to be – and if you need inspiration, pick up this book.

Check out these review(s):

Stray Thoughts

Book Addicts