Anne Shirley is grown up, has married her beloved Gilbert and now is the mother of six mischievous children.

These boys and girls discover a special place all their own, but they never dream of what will happen when the strangest family moves into an old nearby mansion. The Meredith clan is two boys and two girls, with minister father but no mother -- and a runaway girl named Mary Vance. Soon the Meredith kids join Anne's children in their private hideout to carry out their plans to save Mary from the orphanage, to help the lonely minister find happiness, and to keep a pet rooster from the soup pot. There's always an adventure brewing in the sun-dappled world of Rainbow Valley.

April 2024: I haven't touched this since February and have no desire to read any more right now. I hope to come back to this later in the year so I can finish off the series before 2025.

Note to self: own but unread

Setting description, character development, plot all work together to create a great story! This one has them all! At first I thought this book, #7 of the series, was a little slow, but it wasn't long before I was drawn into this one, like all the previous ones, and couldn't put it down. Such great examples Montgomery uses to teach so many lessons! ( )

Rainbow Valley describes more of the lives of the children of Anne and Gilbert - particularly the feud with the Meredith children of the Manse. An enoyable read, ( )

The 7th Anne of Green Gables book takes place one year after the previous book. Anne rarely appears and strangely enough Rainbow Valley was much more prominent in the previous book. This book has an overreaching story arc of the family in the manse; a minister and his four children. The children are the bane of the town and everyone including them thinks the minister needs a wife to "bring up" the children.

Of course, I enjoyed the book but missed Anne being prominent. She would have been perfect to matchmaker as she's done in previous volumes but sadly she doesn't get involved. I did really enjoy the manse children, Mary Vance, and the youngish old maid sisters. Anne's children were best friends of the manse children and played a strong role in the novel but again it was the manse children getting into all the scrapes. Enjoyable but only a so-so entry in the series. ( )