Many of the LM Montgomery short story anthologies can read fairly redundantly, since editor Rea Wilmshurst has grouped many of them into themes. This group of stories is less so - the theme is of stories by the sea, a place close to Montgomery's heart, and therefore the stories range from romances to children's tales to those of family love, all closely linked by place. Romances do tend to lead the way, of course, as she certainly does those best. Some characters will seem familiar (Paul and Nora), others are clear precursors to folks we meet in her novels (Uncle Jesse = Captain Jim), but to fans this will be a meeting of friends.

While stories aren't quite as compelling as most of Montgomery's, the imagery is as stunning as ever. She is truly an inspiration.

I didn't love this. The stories were pretty undeveloped and it was not nearly as engaging as her novels.

Some good, some meh, and unfortunately my least favorite was the last one so it left a bad taste. The arrangement was rather poorly done, too -- if you're going to have stories on a theme, then you have to at least separate the ones with the exact same plot so that they're not right next to each other.

Still, there are some good stories in here, and it's interesting to see some of the characters Montgomery later recycled in other stories, particularly the Anne books. And I liked the range of moods for the stories here, as varied as the moods of the sea -- playful, mournful, stormy, beautiful, tragic, serene.