#BlogTour: After Anne by Logan Steiner @LoganASteiner @Harper360UK @RandomTTours #AfterAnne #LoganSteiner #RandomThingsTours

Book Synopsis:

A stunning and unexpected portrait of Lucy Maud Montgomery, creator of one of literature’s most prized heroines, whose personal demons were at odds with her most enduring legacy—the irrepressible Anne of Green Gables.

“Dear old world,” she murmured, “you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.” —L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, 1908

As a young woman, Maud had dreams bigger than the whole of Prince Edward Island. Her exuberant spirit had always drawn frowns from her grandmother and their neighbors, but she knew she was meant to create, to capture and share the way she saw the world. And the young girl in Maud’s mind became more and more persistent: Here is my story, she said. Here is how my name should be spelled—Anne with an “e.”

But the day Maud writes the first lines of Anne of Green Gables, she gets a visit from the handsome new minister in town, and soon faces a decision: forge her own path as a spinster authoress, or live as a rural minister’s wife, an existence she once called “a synonym for respectable slavery.” The choice she makes alters the course of her life.

With a husband whose religious mania threatens their health and happiness at every turn, the secret darkness that Maud herself holds inside threatens to break through the persona she shows to the world, driving an ever-widening wedge between her public face and private self, and putting her on a path towards a heartbreaking end.

Beautiful and moving, After Anne reveals Maud’s hidden personal challenges while celebrating what was timeless about her life and art—the importance of tenacity and the peaceful refuge found in imagination

My Review:

After Anne is a beautifully written, absorbing book about the life of one of my favourite childhood authors.

Firstly the author has done a great job at bring Maud to life and I loved getting to know her throughout the book. She’s a wonderful character full of charisma, especially at the beginning and I really enjoyed being able to see the world through her point of view. Her imagination is amazing and it made me smile how she referred to the two parts of her as animals in her mind.

Anne of Green Gables and was one of my favourite childhood books so I loved all the details about the real life places in the book. I hadn’t realised they were real places until I read this book and I’ve added going to Prince Edward’s Island to my bucket list. It was great to follow Maud as she wrote the book and I loved the author’s imagination in the bits where she describes how Maud might have got the inspiration for Anne of Green Gables.

This book starts after Maud’s death and then flashes back covering significant parts of her life. The author’s writing quickly drew me into the book and I soon found it hard to put the book down as I was so enjoying this fabulous story. It made me so cross to see people’s attitudes toward Maud and her writing. It was upsetting to think about how many women were forced to give up stuff that they loved as it didn’t fit into societal expectations at that time.

Overall, as you can probably tell, I absolutely loved this book and will be recommending it to everyone. It was very sad to see Maud change throughout the book due to the challenges she faces and it did make me wonder what she might have done or achieved if things had been different.

Huge thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me onto the blog tour and to the publisher for my copy of this book. If you are a Anne of Green Gables fan or just a historical fiction fan then you need to read this book.

About The Author:

Logan is a lawyer by day and a writer by baby bedtime. Her writing explores motherhood and the creative life.

Logan’s debut novel AFTER ANNE will be released on May 30, 2023 by HarperCollins. For fans of Anne of Green Gables and fans of complex, creative women, the novel tells the life story of the author Lucy Maud Montgomery. See Logan’s website for more information: https://logansteiner.com/.

Logan also writes a weekly Substack newsletter called The Creative Sort: https://logansteiner.substack.com/.

After graduating from Pomona College and Harvard Law School, Logan clerked for three federal judges, spent six years in Big Law, and served for three years as an Assistant United States Attorney. She now specializes in brief writing at a boutique law firm. Logan lives in Denver with her husband, daughter, and the cranky old man of the house, a Russian Blue cat named Taggart.