Anne of Avonlea is the second book in the Anne series of books by Lucy Maud Montgomery. In this story Anne is sixteen years old and just beginning her work as the new schoolteacher at Avonlea.
Although she has left behind her dizzier escapades and dramas, she is still prone to mishaps, but her reactions are more tempered and she is just as idealistic as she’s always been:

“…I’ve come so far short in so many things. I haven’t done what I meant to do when I began to teach last fall…I haven’t lived up to my ideals.”

“None of us ever do, said Mrs. Allan with a sigh. “But then, Anne, you know what Lowell says, ‘not failure but low aim is crime.’ We must have ideals and try to live up to them, even if we never quite succeed. Life would be a sorry business without them.”

And she is still a romantic at heart. When her best friend, Diana becomes engaged to Fred Wright, she wonders what she sees in him. ‘He’s very nice and jolly…but he’s just Fred Wright.’
When Anne’s time came, if it ever did, she hoped there’d be something a little more thrilling about it!

As Anne begins her job as the new schoolteacher, her noble-minded ideals about teaching are challenged by an insolent young boy in her class who thinks girl teachers are no good.
At home, she and Marilla have taken on the care of six-year-old twins, Davy and Dora, the orphaned children of Marilla’s third cousin. Gilbert Blythe is still on the scene, discretely in love with Anne, being a good friend, and biding his time.
I enjoyed this more mature Anne who hasn’t lost her spark and colour but is less prickly than she was when she was younger. Montgomery’s writing, as usual, was full of humour and insights into small town life.
As the story finishes, Anne has a brief view of ‘unsuspected feelings and realities.’

‘Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one’s life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down: perhaps its crept to one’s side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music; perhaps…perhaps…love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden- hearted rose slipping from its green sheath.’🌹

Linking to We Love L.M. Montgomery Week

TBR 23 in ’23 Challenge