I got so much more than I expected! But it might have helped that (mostly) I expected saccharin and that's pretty much it. Anne avoided two irksome lit traps that I was ready to jump on.

First, there's the main character that everyone loves and by whom everyone is amazed, the author hoping to convince the reader to love this character because all of these surrogates do. I was convinced that Montgomery was going to try this tack early, as I found Anne more bothersome than winning, despite the initial reaction of the secondary characters. She avoids this first trap, I think, because of the successful navigation of the second.

The second being, the main character is really only a two-dimensional foil challenging all other characters to evolve to suit. For example, every Shirley Temple film. Yes, the presence of Anne in the lives of the Avonlea characters is transformative. But Anne is changeable, as well, and grows without becoming stale or cynical. I don't particularly care how the secondary characters evolve in a story - that's why they're secondary. If the events of a story aren't enough to cause development in a protagonist, why bother recounting the events? Montgomery handles this growth beautifully.

Lastly, though most of the description comes from a child character with an overactive imagination, I love how Prince Edward Island is presented here. Really lovely setting.

Please don't say I have to read more of these. Series fiction is so blurgh.