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A review by elisakissa
Runotyttö etsii tähteään by L.M. Montgomery
2.0
This is the weakest book in the series. The tone is melancholic, but not in a romantic, touching way. In a depressing, Emily-come-on-pull-yourself-togehter-for-gods-sake type of way.
I felt like the story dragged on without nothing particularly significant happening for pages and pages on end. Most of the book was filled with different suitors going in and out, while Emily goes through the motions - she gets up, writes, feels dead inside, describes the nature outside her windows in decorative words, writes, goes back to bed. The years go by. I felt like her writing was no longer the central part of the story. She kept writing for magazines and she even got her novel published. But all of this was told to us like the author was just reporting it to us. The dreamy, poetic writer girl whom I fell in love with was gone. Instead we were faced with the sullen, practical Emily, whose creativity felt like a dog on a leash and whose writing seemed to only mean a career anymore.
And don't get me started on her love life. I never rooted for Teddy, because I felt like them being "destined to be together" was too obvious, and Teddy's character never was fleshed out enough for me to like him. But when Emily got herself into the whole mess with Dean, I thought that it would be better to just marry her off to Teddy so no more damage could be done. While Dean was surely a creep about to marry a girl half his age, having had his eyes on her since her early teens, I always kind of liked him. Well, at least I pitied him, and I felt bad for what Emily did to him.
I think I ended up disliking most of the characters in this book. With most of them the reason was that I felt like they became shells of themselves repeating the same patterns they had in the two previous books, without adding anything interesting to the story. Then there was Ilse. I used to love her and her relationship with Emily. But in this book she didn't feel like herself anymore, she had become uncaring and mean. The only character I liked was Mrs Kent, she became very interesting. But maybe she was only in the book for so little that there was no time to make her unlikeable.
I still couldn't give this book just one star. The reason is mostly that the rest of the series will always have a special place in my heart. Also the book picked up the pace in the end and the last pages did grab my attention. Even if the ending did annoy the heck out of me.
I felt like the story dragged on without nothing particularly significant happening for pages and pages on end. Most of the book was filled with different suitors going in and out, while Emily goes through the motions - she gets up, writes, feels dead inside, describes the nature outside her windows in decorative words, writes, goes back to bed. The years go by. I felt like her writing was no longer the central part of the story. She kept writing for magazines and she even got her novel published. But all of this was told to us like the author was just reporting it to us. The dreamy, poetic writer girl whom I fell in love with was gone. Instead we were faced with the sullen, practical Emily, whose creativity felt like a dog on a leash and whose writing seemed to only mean a career anymore.
And don't get me started on her love life. I never rooted for Teddy, because I felt like them being "destined to be together" was too obvious, and Teddy's character never was fleshed out enough for me to like him. But when Emily got herself into the whole mess with Dean, I thought that it would be better to just marry her off to Teddy so no more damage could be done. While Dean was surely a creep about to marry a girl half his age, having had his eyes on her since her early teens, I always kind of liked him. Well, at least I pitied him, and I felt bad for what Emily did to him.
I think I ended up disliking most of the characters in this book. With most of them the reason was that I felt like they became shells of themselves repeating the same patterns they had in the two previous books, without adding anything interesting to the story. Then there was Ilse. I used to love her and her relationship with Emily. But in this book she didn't feel like herself anymore, she had become uncaring and mean. The only character I liked was Mrs Kent, she became very interesting. But maybe she was only in the book for so little that there was no time to make her unlikeable.
I still couldn't give this book just one star. The reason is mostly that the rest of the series will always have a special place in my heart. Also the book picked up the pace in the end and the last pages did grab my attention. Even if the ending did annoy the heck out of me.