THE BLUE CASTLE SPOILER FREE REVIEW

 

This book is more proof LM Montgomery is one of my favorite authors ever.

The Blue Castle by LM Montgomery is a classic romance novel taking place in the 1920s in Deerwood, a fictional city in Ontario, Canada. Our main character is 29-year old Valancy Stirling, who is considered an "old-maid" and shunned by her family because she is 29 years old and not married yet. Valancy has also felt that she has always got the short end of the stick when it came to everything in her family, and she wishes to get away from them to finally live the life she wants. She at first mostly does this by daydreaming about a blue castle where she has everything she's ever wanted. Valancy also gets sick frequently, and one day she gets a letter in the mail from her family doctor that she only has a year left to live. Wanting to live her last year of life to the fullest, Valancy finally stops being a doormat towards her family. She also leaves them by going to take care of a sickly family friend and finally getting married (to a guy who supposedly has a "bad boy" reputation but is actually a really sweet person), and then these two experiences change the rest of her life for the better in ways she didn't imagine, including discovering her blue castle is...real?

If you love the heartwarming setting of Anne of Green Gables, you'll love this book! The book also has some very surprising twists at the end. I can't talk about them here though, but it makes the book so much more interesting! Also, while it is not a satire book, some of Montgomery's writing also feels pretty satirical at times as she weaves subtle criticism on the way society expects women around Valancy's age to act a certain way and do certain things. So I'd say it's a feminist-friendly book just like Anne! 

But I did give it 4.5 stars. I have to take half a star off because, being a book from the 1920s, there are some minor things that haven't aged well. On one page Valancy's Uncle Benjamin makes an off-handed comment about Indigenous people that's pretty racist in nature, and on another page the g-word is used (racial slur against Romani people). Luckily they're very minor in the story and they are never used again after that, but it's something to be aware of. 

Do you like classic novels too? What are your favorites?