The givens: 1) I have a love-hate relationship with adaptation, and tend to avoid adaptations of things I love, because I cannot help but scrutinize and negatively compare them to the original; 2) I am That Anne Fan who once rode a Greyhound a day and a half across Canada to visit Prince Edward Island; 3) I am about as Northern Californian as it gets and have a strong affinity for Mexican culture.



I went into this only thinking about givens 2 and 3 - all my favorite things! One book! Then was imm

[as some kind of low key Romeo and Juliet couple (hide spoiler)

["Rye does shrooms and Ana is blamed for it." (hide spoiler)

[But that doesn't come, and in fact a character who has no direct Anne counterpart seems to get the most credit for saving the day (hide spoiler)

The givens: 1) I have a love-hate relationship with adaptation, and tend to avoid adaptations of things I love, because I cannot help but scrutinize and negatively compare them to the original; 2) I am That Anne Fan who once rode a Greyhound a day and a half across Canada to visit Prince Edward Island; 3) I am about as Northern Californian as it gets and have a strong affinity for Mexican culture.I went into this only thinking about givens 2 and 3 - all my favorite things! One book! Then was immediately reminded of #1. I struggled with the first few chapters and then had to return the unfinished book to the library anyway. Luckily, they also had the audiobook. Pleasant surprise! The author, Andi Teran, does a credible job as narrator, and I found it much easier to get into from her various voices than from stark, not-written-by-LMM words on a page.Part of my difficulty with the first few chapters was the departure the book takes in the Matthew and Marilla characters, here called Emmett and Abbie. Both are divorced (Emmett only recently, in a subplot that adds little to the book IMO) and here Emmett is the cranky one while Abbie accepts Ana immediately. Ana, of course, is our Anne -- a Latina foster system survivor who spent what free time she had at libraries reading and learning about art and music. She's older than Anne was at the beginning of AoGG, almost 16, and an artist rather than a writer. She's in love with an all-girl punk band called The Hex and Frida Kahlo. Whereas the Matthew, Marilla, Diana, and Gilbert characters all deviate significantly from their progenitors, Ana feels pretty true to Anne's spirit. Plus her last name is Cortez, which I choose to take as a nod to Cordelia.I think I started getting into it more around the time Rye, the Diana counterpart, was introduced. I have secretly always felt Diana didn't really get Anne and is not interesting enough to be her ultimate BFFle over, say, Phil Gordon; this book plays with both of these ideas by making the quality of Rye's character far more ambiguous than Diana. She is a delightfully catty hipster fashionplate who frequently alienates Ana even while bonding with her over feminism and the Hex, and she's also a lesbian (yet never falls in love with Ana, smh) and a fellow WOC. She isn't always a great friend but she's a much more dynamic character than Diana Barry ever was.I was also initially charmed by the Gilbert character, Cole. He rides bikes and immediately crushes on Ana; they trade insults over favorite bands (he prefers Minor Threat to Fugazi) and books ("typical" is how she deems his interest in the Beats). He also calls her Curls, which is not really an insult the way Carrots is, but makes her feel insecure and prompts her into hair-ruining mischief a la Anne's green dye. After that, the similarities to Gilbert stop -- and it's not like Gilbert is an amazing character either, just a good match for Anne, so I didn't mind... until his sad little rich boy family angst and mildly assholish backstory just KEPT cropping up. Like, put a leash on it, dude. No one really cares, especially when you keep complaining about it to Ana.And he got to do that because, unlike Gilbert and Anne, Cole and Ana work out their differences pretty damn quickly. (It's Rye who holds a grudge against him, actually, which makes for a rather different dynamic.) It's cute, at first -- their mutual attraction is convincing and I love Andi Teran's girlish voice for Cole. But when the climax of the book revolves around them (view spoiler) , it stops feeling like Anne of Green Gables in a few ways. Forbidden lovers were a favorite of Anne's in her matchmaking years, but they were completely absent from her or her children's (Rilla of Ingleside is maybe even more my jam than Green Gables) relationships. Anne and Gilbert were bitter rivals for years, then friends while Anne assiduously worked to keep things platonic, even rejecting his first proposal before they finally got together after three books. I love the rivals story, and it wouldn't have hurt Ana and Cole to have some of that. But moreover----- there's a fourth given. Didn't know I needed it.4) Try as I might not to be That Feminist who dismisses all romance out of hand as a distraction for Strong Female Characters, sometimes I kind of am.I know all the reasons why that's a one-dimensional and stupid attitude, and there are plenty of love stories that I enjoy. I am not made of stone, but I do resent the implication that romantic love is a requirement for a happy ending and that a single lady ain't enough on her own. And I think part of that fierce insistence is owed to books like Anne of Green Gables in my childhood, where the heroine was so lively and wonderful and unstoppable that while boys may swoon in her wake, she and her story are complete as is.So anyway, I didn't like how integral the romance became to the resolution of the book. This whole last section was full of weirdness for me. Anne of Green Gables doesn't really have a plot. I get that. There's no suspense after the first few chapters when Marilla decides to keep Anne, and the closest thing there is to a climax is (view spoiler) . So Ana of California, forced to manufacture a plot with stakes, rearranges existent plot points and comes up with a few new ones. Ana spends the whole book worried she'll be sent back to a group home, and plus there's this bullshit with Cole, and then -- THEN -- comes the raspberry cordial incident, translated to (view spoiler) At the climax of the book, Ana is in desperate straits of being doubted and doubting, turned away from all hopes of belonging.A little aside: I reread the entire Anne series last year, including Anne of Ingleside, which is my least favorite. Turns out that's because a) it kind of sucks and b) although LM Montgomery most likely wrote it as a cynical cash grab for sentimental Anne fans to buy, it is a rather unhappy book filled with story after story of Anne's family being lied to by false friends and/or being convinced that their family members don't love them. These stories are supposed to be cute, but they just relay a sense of persistent anxiety at odds with the rest of the series. I was reminded of this creeping dread in the last section of Ana of California. It's not a good feeling.But here's the thing that really took away the fifth star I wanted to give it. Anne saves the day. That's how she wins Diana's parents' approval back after getting Diana drunk, by saving Diana's little sister's life. If there is one defining characteristic to Anne beyond her imagination and tendency to get into scrapes, it is that she is always better than her circumstances and goofy mistakes, and beneath the appearance of flightiness there is intelligence, resourcefulness, grace, and good humor.(I KNOW. SHE'S A PARAGON. SHE'S NOT A REALISTIC CHARACTER, AND THIS IS NO LONGER A GOOD LOOK IN GOOD BOOKS - sidebar to the haters, shut up, no one asked you)Anyway. A chapter literally called "Anne to the Rescue" is what results from the tragic raspberry cordial incident, and Ana was really bummed out and upset about her [arguably much worse than Anne's and certainly more realistically traumatizing] backstory, so now, I am thinking, is the time for Ana to find her own inner strength as well as impress the fuck out of the haters whom no one asked. I wanted her to surprise someone if not save a life; to show people what she is made of and to feel good about herself, to shine. A moment of heroic redemption.. This climax is about proving to Ana that she is already loved, rather than proving to others that she is worthy of love. Which is probably also cool, but when I've spent all book waiting for Ana's moment of brilliance, kind of a bummer for me personally. As much as I don't want to just stack up the two books side by side and say "this fails as an adaptation of my favorite book," because it's obviously not trying to be a super faithful retelling and it is more charming on its own merits and drug jokes anyway, I really wish that particular parallel were included. She deserves it.