A review by elevetha
A Tangled Web by L.M. Montgomery

3.0

Montgomery has such a way with words, from scathing snarky comments to glorious prose about nature. And it's often a joy to read, though I did have a few struggles with this one, despite liking it a fair bit.

Firstly, it reads a bit differently. We basically bounce around in narration from character to character to character to character to character. At the beginning, sometimes it's just a sentence about one character only to have the next five sentences about 5 OTHER characters. There's a lot of names being thrown around and honestly, it was hard to keep track of who was who, unless they were one of the main...10?? For all that it bounced around though, you did feel like it was a complete story in the end.

I had to roll my eyes at so many people here. So many of them were so stupid, and all regarding love. It was slightly frustrating because it was almost hard to believe any of them really in love, they were so fickle or dumb about it. Which made it hard to root for anybody. Most especially Gay I would have liked to bop over the head. Probably Hugh and Jocelyn I most rooted for, and even they to some degree needed a head bopping.

I expected so much more from the stupid jug. I mean, the more it went, the more I knew nothing would come of it, but still, I was promised things, and it was pretty duddy.

Also, dear heavens, I would like to see a family tree for these two families because good grief. Is the whole damn island just these two families intermarrying???? (I know it's not, but it sure seems like it )

But all that being said, it was really genuinely a pleasure to read. Qualms aside, it mostly worked and Montgomery's writing is just so