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I suffered all that drama for that short of an ending?!!☹️ I definitely prefer and would recommend the Anne of Green Gables series over this one.

I don’t know if Emily and I would have gotten along in real life, but she’ll always have a special place in my heart because in a way, I got to grow up with her.
I started this trilogy in early High School and I finished it now in college.
I have gotten to experience Emily’s phases of life right along with her and it’s been the most unforgettable experience.
Anything Montgomery writes I find to be an effortless read, and this was no different. If I want to get back into reading, she is always guaranteed to get me out of that slump :)

Emily is left behind at New Moon while her friends pursue their dreams and travel the world. She throws herself into her writing and struggles to get her stories published, but gradually earns the respect of her family when she begins to make her writing a success. Through a series of mishaps, she loses her connection to some of her dearest friends and her childhood sweetheart, Teddy Kent. She searches for happiness with a man she doesn't really love. Emily has to face the truth deep within her heart before she loses Teddy Kent for good.

This has always been my least favorite book in the Emily trilogy. She spends so much of the book being lonely and melancholy, and it makes me depressed. There isn't as much humor in this book as the other ones. However, it is still an excellent book and an enjoyable read!

I love the intricacies of Emily's character as she is really learning what it means to be "grown up" and take responsibility for your life. She is a deeply complex person, and I love the internal battles she fights with herself.

The plot is a little slow in places, especially in chapters that have Emily's journal entries. But there are other exciting scenes in the plot and wild storylines that make up for the slower bits. The ending is much too rushed. It needs more of a denouement. Everything is resolved much too quickly, and it always leaves me feeling unsatisfied. Still, it is a wonderful conclusion to Emily's story!

3.5 stars

Emily is now an adult! It takes place over several years, during which a lot happens - mainly relationship drama. Not surprised at the ending, but that was a bit rushed. Think I liked this better than book 2, but less than book 1, so we'll say 4,5 stars. I'll happily re-read this trilogy later on!

This is a tale of a young heroine's quest for succes. It is a tale of ambition and of a young woman obsessed with wordplay and poetry. It is a tale of bleak depression and the writer's block that comes along with it. It is a tale of artistry and the fragility with which art is created. And, of course, it is a tale of love and hope and happiness; a tale of rereading old letters and striving for the bright future, that was once foretold.

“The ghosts of things that never happened are worse than the ghosts of things that did.”

This book has always resonated deeply with me. Even when I was a child who hardly understood that Emily's long period of writer's block is actually a sign of deep depression, and that Ilse's gay adventures with Emily only proves how far they've drifted apart.
I suspect I loved this book dearly back then, because of the love story. The intense attraction between Teddy and Emily; their many misunderstandings; and Dean Priest who creates a place for himself in Emily's sorrow, makes for an epic love story. Add in the admiration of princes, writers and a hidden diamond in the grass – and you have a fairy tale that will enchant any 11-year old.

Teddy Kent will always be one of my favorite heroes; even though upon rereading this, it is hard to explain why. He is, as Ilse would say, selfish. He cares as little for Emily's writing as Dean does, and his characterization seems oddly vague compared to Perry's bursting personality. As Teddy is a quiet creature, who Emily doesn't even dare to look at, fearing to expose her feelings, he is only described through Emily's thoughts, not through direct interaction. Montgomery seems to contrast her characterization; where as Perry and Ilse are often described through direct and merry scenes and rarely in Emily's diary, Teddy's personality is mainly to be found in Emily's diary. In that way, Montgomery allows Emily to describe Teddy. To the reader, he is a creature of Emily's own pen. And therefore, a fragment of her own mind.

“Don't be led away by those howls about realism. Remember-pine woods are just as real as pigsties and a darn sight pleasanter to be in.”

But, while Teddy Kent holds my heart (and Emily's), he has only a small part of this book. This is a tale of an authoress; of wordplay, writing and rewriting, and ultimately a loss of words. Emily falls into depression, lays down her pen and makes a terrible decision. Montgomery spins a vivid tale of how much an artist suffers without ways to express their feelings. Emily is numb for so long, she is willing to marry a man she doesn't love, just so she can let him take hold of her life, leaving her no decisions of her own.
Emily uses Dean cruelly; she adds on to the pain and loneliness, he has experienced through his own life. And while Dean is painted to be bot villain in this, one cannot help but feel sorry for him. Like Mrs. Kent, he falls victim to his own jealousy, the symptom of a broken and a love-starved soul. Like Mrs. Kent, he clings on too tightly. One of the many themes that runs through this book, showcasing the bitter and ugly side of depending on someone too much.

Another reason, this book still resonates with me, is the fine thread of nostalgia that runs through the novel. Emily, staying behind in Blair Water, is constantly confronted with the ghost of things past. Ilse visits in a whirlwind of laughter and colors, and always leaves with a sigh; concluding that the careless summers of their childhood cannot be replicated. Perry keeps proposing to Emily out of sheer habit, Elizabeth, Laura and Jimmy constantly laments that their little Emily has been replaced with a young woman. Even the cats grow old, beloved mentors die and Emily is left alone, feeling deserted and betrayed by time.
When Emily finds the young and hopeful letters of her 14-year old self adressing her 24-year old self, she almost cannot bear to read it. The hope and wonder, the letter is written with, is almost poisonous. The 14-year old Emily envies her older self; and yet the 24-year old Emily finds herself longing to be 14 again. To be a happy child with an endless future.

I almost feel like I'm reading a letter from a younger version of myself, whenever I reread Montgomery's words. I loved these books, and Emily herself, so much as a child, it only takes a reread to take me back. The feeling is bittersweet; leaving me a bit nostalgic myself for times that has long passed, for the 14-year old version of me reading these pages and wondering who I would be at 24. Would I be an author like Emily? Married to the love of my life? A mother? A writer? Both? Neither? While I'm not an Emily, she is a part of me. And has been ever since I read this book for the very first time.

“Never be silent with persons you love and distrust ... Silence betrays.”

I read this earlier in the year and forgot to put it on here hehe

Reading Emily of New Moon I began to have an idea of why I've never loved and spent time with Emily Byrd Starr as I have with Anne Shirley or Pat Gardiner. I began to suss it out then, but I loved the book and it still seemed strange to me. With Emily Climbs it began to seem clearer – that dark streak running through it, I said, and left it at that. But it is only on finishing Emily's Quest that I fully understand – and that is partly because I know, on closing this book, I will be leaving it closed for possibly another twenty years. Whether I have the moral courage to read it then will be interesting to see – almost like Emily's fortitude in reading her letter from her fourteen-year-old self to herself at twenty-four, except unlike the very young Emily I know the pain within the pages aimed twenty years ahead.

There is pain in the other books, deep and seemingly impassible, and I always cry over the other books (Matthew…). I recognize myself in Valancy, heaven knows, and Anne and Pat, and so their pain is very real to me. But it is their pain. The pain that laces through Emily is personal. I have never read L.M. Montgomery's journals or memoirs or letters, so I don't know if my inference is true, but it feels as though a great deal of Emily comes from Lucy Maude. I find it hard to believe, for one thing, that the snippets of reviews Emily reads to her staunchly supportive family aren't true to life. My feeling is that while the specifics of the circumstances of the years spanned in Quest are wholly fictional, wholly Emily's own, the emotions are not in the least fictional. Fictionalized.

After decades loving Anne and Pat and Valancy, still I can't help but identify most strongly of all with Emily – and it is the Emily in this book that brings me to tears. Alone, and left alone, and in no small way responsible for that aloneness, but knowing that there was no other action or set of actions that would have ever been tolerable in any given situation. "I have not heard even from Ilse for a long time. She has forgotten me, too." I know that feeling well. That was the feeling – of having been forgotten in general, compounded with actually being told by someone I held dear that he had forgotten about me, that caused me to – as someone wise recently said – be still and lock the gate from the inside. I walked away then and made some decisions and will hold to them. My locks might get a bit rusty.

Facing the daily struggle against the inner demon editor who insists that every word written is trash, or worse, that no one will read this nonsense, that … well. She was, obviously, far more successful in ignoring or silencing that voice than I ever have been, or, at times, ever hope to be. It's funny, though, and I apologize for a spoiler, but even Emily's greatest literary triumph to date was painful to me; I haven't finished a book, much less had it rejected by uncounted publishers, but I know that if I did, and gave up as Emily does, there is no Uncle Jimmy figure in my life to pull it out of storage and send it out again.

So I wonder, in a way, that I didn't love these books more when I was the age of Emily (book two). An artist of extraordinary talent, when I wanted to be and planned to be an artist; a writer heroine, when I already was scribbling a little here and there; hard work leading to success and happiness. It should all have appealed, then. Now … the pain is too real, and the abruptly happy ending not as easy to swallow. It's a beautiful book, and a beautiful trilogy … but not for the young and hopeful, or the … what? Not-so-young and futile-feeling. Perhaps it's for those who have been through the pain and persevered better than I have. For me? I think Emily is going to go into a box, and the box is going to be set at the back of a shelf, and the dust will collect on it, and – no. I won't even express the hope that one day I'll read them again without the ache. On the shelf they'll stay.

This was probably my least favorite of the three books. That being said, it was completely necessary for the course of the story to play out. This book is more full of mental hardship than previous books (Emily is growing up after all), which makes for a more difficult read. Not that difficult is bad, but after coming to love such a vibrant, positive character and then see that character mentally anguished for some period of time. No one wants to see someone they care about in pain, and I definitely do care about Emily. My one real complaint is that the very end of the book (and series) seems almost anti-climactic. After an entire book full of waiting, seemingly lasting forever at times, and then the conclusion is all of two pages long! I need details woman! L.M. seems perfectly happy to give us a million details of the scenery and the knickknacks on the shelves, but the culmination of a three book series is wrapped up in just 2 pages! L.M. mocks me! And probably with a slow blooming, magnificent smile at that.

Emily's Quest was just so incredibly depressing and frustrating, I really found it difficult to read with any pleasure. The misunderstandings between Emily and Teddy (and Ilse) are so very obvious, and could have been so easily sorted out. Instead, the creepy Dean Priest steps in and persuades Emily to marry him after she is badly hurt in an accident (which Priest unwittingly precipitated, but then used to his advantage).

The final third of the book was the hardest to read as the misunderstandings are compounded, and the friends grow apart. It is only in the final chapter that things are made right, but even this is rushed and doesn't actually feel like the redemption of the star crossed lovers in the way it should.

Unlike the other LMM books, I can't actually see myself reading this again, as it actually made me feel uncomfortable and sad.

It's a quest story! It's a romance (a la Northrop Frye)! It's an echo of A Midsummer Night's Dream! And because of all that, it's oh-so-satisfying! Do I love Emily's series more than Anne's? Quite possibly.