Emily's Quest: Emily Byrd Starr, #3 -- L.M. Montgomery
It only took me TWO YEARS to get around to reading the third Emily book. You should be very proud of me.
(Seriously, you should. I hate* finishing series that I love: As regular readers probably already know, I still haven't finished Season Seven of Buffy.)
So, Emily's Quest. As I said in today's Kirkus post, 224 pages of it felt like being stabbed in the chest. But in a good way.
Well, mostly.
Emily Starr and Teddy Kent belong together. Emily knows it, and she thinks that Teddy does, too. When Teddy heads off to art school, they faithfully promise to think of each other whenever they look at Vega of the Lyre.
And Teddy won't be gone for long.
But years pass, and Teddy rarely returns home to the Island. Pride, misunderstandings and distance begin to take their toll: After all, Love Was Never Technically Declared.
And, since first meeting Emily all of those years ago, Dean Priest is there, waiting in the wings, just waiting for his chance. (And for Emily to no longer be jailbait.)
If this applies to you, this is not a hypothetical question: After Emily's Quest, how is it humanly possible to still be on Team Dean?
I don't mean in comparison with Teddy: I understand that Teddy's not a particularly dynamic character, and I understand why some would take issue with him as a romantic lead. But as a person, Teddy's an okay guy. He's got his flaws, but so does Emily. And they compliment each other well, and while I might not go for him, I understand why Emily does.
DEAN, THOUGH. Now that she's an adult, I can get past the age difference. (Though I still think he's a creeper for having the hots for her when she was, like, twelve.)
But what he does to her in this book is TOTALLY WORSE than when Amy March burned Jo's manuscript, and most people generally find THAT unforgivable. (Or am I projecting?) Yes, he didn't destroy her work—she did that on her own—but he attempted to destroy her confidence, her passion, and her independence, and that's just REPREHENSIBLE.
I hated him. And I didn't forgive him. And I hoped the rest of his stupid, stupid life was lonely. Geez.
Beyond all of that, I did think that this last installment had a strange pace—lots of passages that would probably get filmed as pages ripping off of a calendar as Emily recuperates or writes or takes walks with Dean or moons out her window about Teddy—and the ending was so sudden that it wasn't as satisfying as the moment when Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe (SWOON) finally get together**. But I still prefer Emily to Anne.
I loved Montgomery's exploration of how friendships evolve as the players mature, and I loved any scene with Ilse, and the parade of Emily's unsuitable suitors was seltzer-out-the-nose funny, and my jaw dropped when I heard Teddy's Mother's Secret. I found the ending somewhat unsatisfying, but I already want to sit down and re-read the trilogy.
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*Get ready for italics overload.
**There's that gorgeous line about Post-Scarlet Fever Gil imagining her wearing the green dress she's working on and wearing starflowers in her hair, and he catches his breath, but forces himself to say something light and casually walk away and IT JUST KILLS ME every time.
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Previously:
1. Emily of New Moon
2. Emily Climbs
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Book source: My own copy.