I enjoyed reading these short stories. Most of them are about love and marriage and most of them have happy endings. I don't think things always turn out as well in real life as they do in her stories, but reading her books is always a nice break from reality.

A collection of L. M. Montgomery's charming and chaste short stories (mostly of a romantic nature) that were originally published in magazines in the early 1900s.

If you are a Montgomery fan, then you will like this book. I'm giving it three stars because none of the stories are absolutely amazing or particularly memorable, but I did enjoy reading them, and I may re-read this collection again sometime in the future.

I love L.M. Montgomery, and I especially love her short stories. They always leave me feeling happy and hopeful.

read a second time 2/2001

I know I've read these. But as I do not own the book and have not been able to read them more than once, I cannot recall them to mind right now.

Reread of this collection of L.M. Montgomery's short to shortish classics. Descriptive settings of Canadian Prince Edward Island and unique characters of all ages live on through her historic fiction.

4/2024 reread:
This remains one of my favorite LMM short story collections. Some stories are rather dreary, but others are uplifting, and all feature sympathetic characters and interesting scenarios. My favorites have not changed, but I appreciate other tales I previously was not impressed by ("Kismet," "Akin to Love," for instance).

***
2011?
A lovely collection of short stories, many of them about 'misplaced' romance, in which women marry out of convenience, but a few truly romantic ones too.

My favorites are 'The Finished Story', 'The Garden of Spices', and 'The Bride is Waiting'. True, I could spot the 'plot twists' a mile away, but that doesn't lessen the stories for me in the slightest. My reading isn't necessarily driven by plot, but what happens in the plot-that is, the characters, dialogue, etc.

Definitely worth reading and rereading.

3.5

While I am a fan of L.M. Montgomery, I was not a big fan of this book in particular. It's a collection of 14 short stories, written from 1899 to 1935, and although it was interesting to see the progression of her writing style, I didn't generally love the stories (there are a couple of exceptions). Also, my edition of this book contains a relatively lengthy introduction that is packed with references to the individual stories, so I would recommend waiting until after reading all the stories before circling back to the intro: a) to avoid all the spoilers, and b) because hardly any of that intro is going to make sense unless you read the stories first.

Here are my star ratings of the individual stories. Unfortunately in my mind this book both started and ended with my least favourite stories in the book, so both the first and the final impressions weren't that great. That said, there were 3 or 4 good stories in this collection, but not enough that I would really want to reread the book or hang onto it. I'm glad I read it though.

Kismet - 2
Emily's Husband - 3
The Girl and the Wild Race - 4
The Promise of Lucy Ellen - 2.5
The Parting of the Ways - 3
The Doctor's Sweetheart - 4
By Grace of Julius Caesar - 4
Akin to Love - 3.5
The Finished Story - 3.5
My Lady Jane - 3
Abel and His Great Adventure - 3.5
The Garden of Spices - 4.5 (This was my favourite story in the book!)
The Bride is Waiting - 3
I Know a Secret - 2

I read this book of short stories one a day. Very sweet.

I loved all of the stories in this book—a pleasant surprise, as there are usually a few that I don’t enjoy as much. And of course, it was brimming with all the classic L. M. Montgomery charm that I always look forward to and enjoy.

This is a great collection of short stories by one of my favourite authors. They're mostly along the theme of love and marriage. Having read a lot of LM Montgomery I was a little surprised at the setting of the first story, which is set in public at a horse race. It's just so unusual for Montgomery's stories to take place in a public area with a lot of strangers. They're usually in more rural areas where the main characters are well acquainted with every else present. Most of the stories, however, do fall into that common pattern. There are some definite hilarious situations that the characters find themselves in, and I thoroughly enjoyed this collection.