Annie's Song

This review was originally posted on Addicted To Romance Annie's Song is one of the most loved books in the historical romance genre and can you believe that I have NEVER read this one? It has been on my TBR for the longest time here and I finally picked this one up. So what took me so long with this one here? Well honestly, I think I feared that it wouldn't meet up with my expectations and the "hype" of so many other romance readers but I can definitely see the charm and delights of this book and why it is such a loved story for so many readers. It was quite interesting to see the level on which Catherine Anderson took this story and found the portrayal of this story to be so entrancing in many ways. And lastly---well look at the stepback below ---that should convince you how much you need this book!! :) Annie Song is a story that takes place in Oregon in the late 1800's. Alex Montgomery has had guardianship over his younger brother since their parents were killed. When he learns that his brother, his only family, has committed the worst of sins....raping a daughter of a local laywer and a young woman who is rumored to not have "all of her mental faculties together" he is horrified that someone he raised would commit such a vile horrific act especially on such a innocent woman. He kicks his brother out of his home and life, and offers apologies to the family and responsibility if there are any consequences. When four months later, Annie is pregnant, Alex offers himself up to provide for her and take responsibility in raising the child and to protect the family from a scandal. But Alex soon learns that things with Annie aren't all what they appear, and that she isn't "touched" she is only deaf and has a working intelligence and is critical thinking even if there are certain things she doesn't have an understanding of. But their love will surprise them in the most beautiful of ways... When God saw fit to bestow such a gift, a man with any sense didn’t ask questions. This book was beyond touching and poignant and reaches inside the heart and tangles with all those tender emotions that don't always get reached even in a romance. Annie's Song just BROKE my heart in good ways and heart breaking of ways. Annie ----this heroine, has had it rough that is for sure. I SO wasn't a fan of her parents at all. Even though its obvious they do love her in their own way, I could never like them. Annie became deaf when she got sick as a child but her parents think she is going crazy. They have a family member that went mentally insane so they assume the same thing has happened to Annie but that is so not the case. And then the worst of the worst happens, she is violently raped. Annie doesn't understand what has happened to her, why there is such violence, what she did to deserve it only that her parents are looking at her differently than before. But when she gets pregnant and gets married to Alex....I wanted to just hug her because she doesn't even know she has been married or is even pregnant (parents ---are fully to blame to be honest for this crime) and poor Alex for having to try to explain this to his deaf wife. But Alex even though at first his intentions are to return her to her parents after she gives birth and will take the baby...he soon changes his tune. Especially after seeing how special his wife is, and that she is more than capable of being a wife and a mother. In retrospect, he looked back on the events that had drawn them together and believed with all his heart that an invisible hand had moved him and her about like pieces on a chessboard, aligning their positions, manipulating incidents, bringing them inexorably to a collision point. Fate? The Almighty? Alex didn’t know, nor did he care to guess. All that mattered was this moment and the feeling that it was wonderfully and perfectly right. Their journey in their discovery of what they can be together as husband and wife is beautiful in every form you can imagine. Seeing their growth together and discovery is a creation of emotion and empowerment. And seeing that self empowerment is different for everyone. Seeing Annie and Alex go on their journey to the simple things to the more complicated aspects that enter a relationship, they need to learn to understand each other and accept one another fully. I love how protective Alex is over Annie, and just wants her safe and happy and fulfilled. I love how he shows her what true love is capable of and seeing her learn how to accept herself and see herself as she truly is. This is a story of depths of emotion, heartfelt journeys, epic love to take your breath away and a story to leave you with such joy and peace from within.....SENSATIONALLY WRITTEN!

4.5 this was my first ever historical romance book & omg i loved it !!! alex & annie are the cutest i love them both sm❤️‍🩹

Loved the first half of the book but had some frustrations with the second half. I listened to the audiobook and the narrator felt overly dramatic so I recommend reading this one instead of listening to it.

My Year of Historical Romance - Book 17 Gilded Age, Oregon, USA So, this is a book I bought a few years ago and was happy it came up as a BR choice in one of my groups here on BT so that I finally had an excuse to read it. But, it is yet another one where I have a dissenting opinion on; one that had the bones of a great story but fell apart in the execution for me and I feel the romance is highly problematic. I was unable to suspend my belief that people could be this ignorant in the time it was set AND the fact that the age gap between the 20-year-old Annie and 29 (I think)-year-old Alex seemed like 30 years rather than 10 because the author seemed to deliberately choose to infantilise Anne the whole way through the book. She wasn't allowed to present as an adult in any way, other than how her body was considered sexually. Of course. Not creepy at all as she was still described very much in childlike terms. But before I get into any of my criticisms, I do want to point out that there is some beautiful writing here, and some gorgeous imagery (see quote below) and I can't say that I didn't spill a tear or two (or more) because all of those things are true. Another truth is that I found it a compelling read, despite my numerous issues with it, because I was rooting so hard for Anne to get her dues. Grasping the bars and letting her hands slide down their length, Annie knelt on the wooden floor. Ignoring the grit that pricked one bare knee, she fastened her gaze on the heavens. Dawn. To her, it was the most beautiful part of the day, and unless she was sick, which was hardly ever, she never missed watching it. Right now the sky looked blue-black, just as it did in the dead of night, but she knew by the lackluster glimmer of the stars that day was about to break. It never ceased to amaze her when it happened. Catching her breath, she watched as a rose-pink crack zigzagged across the horizon. A few minutes later, glorious shafts of light spilled forth from it, lending everything they touched a magical luminance. When the mountains became visible, their peaks were wreathed by a low-hanging mist the color of pale pink rose petals. Then, like a smile that slowly gained radiance, the light beams streaking the sky began to turn a brilliant gold. Awestruck, Annie tightened her hands on the iron bars, thinking that, in place of music, God had given her the sunrises. Even without her ears, she heard the song in her heart, but it was no less moving for all that. Beautiful music made of light. Closing her eyes, Annie remembered all the sounds that usually came with first light, the crow of a rooster, the strident outbursts from little birds, the distant barking of a dog, the whisper of the morning breeze as it picked up. Those sounds were forever lost to her, and yet she had filed them away in her memory, hers to recall and enjoy whenever it pleased her. this passage had me almost breathless with the pictures it evoked in my head... despite the fact that Annie was seeing all this through the bars on the window of the room she was in. But, these bars didn't cause me too much concern, because they made sense for the room they were located in which despite how it seems, was not a prison for her. The choice to put her in this room, in particular, rubbed me wrong however because it was a nursery. Anyway, moving on, because it ain't all pretty. My two main problems were some of the incredibly horrible and mostly unnecessary ways Annie was described that were so rife throughout the book and subsequently how badly she was treated by EVERYONE both before AND after the '💡' moment. It seemed to me to be a deliberate authorial choice to infantilise this 20 year old woman instead of acknowledging instead that she was merely lacking in all the normal social graces, any companions, any education and even proper clothing of any kind, due to the horrific deliberate choices made by her family for... fucking diabolical and totally selfish reasons that had nothing whatsoever to do with any lack of finances. And these parents were just beyond redemption for me because they were written like caricatures. The author tried to redeem the mother later on in the book, but no sale on that for me. And part of the way the author was able to continue this throughout the book is that we rarely got to hear from her perspective. Nowhere near enough time was given to find out what was going through Anne's head once she had moved into Alex's house. (view spoiler)[So because it fucked me off so much, here are some of the copious examples of how Annie was described in this book; 🔸 She isn’t right in her mind, (Prologue - one of the men who chose to watch her be raped rather than stand up to her rapist) 🔸 Mentally she’s still a child, and not a very bright one at that, (again from the prologue) 🔸 a helpless little girl (Ch 1 - Alex) 🔸 moron (Ch 1 -the rapist) 🔸 little idiot (Ch 1 - the rapist) 🔸 retarded girl. (Ch 1 - Alex) 🔸 isn’t normal. She’s fetched, and her idiocy, (same sentence. Ch 2 -her father) 🔸 Soiled goods, (Ch 2 -her father) 🔸 moron - again (Ch 2 -her father) 🔸 isn’t capable of raising a child, (Ch 3 -her father) 🔸 became what she is now. (Ch 3 -her father) 🔸 “Until now, the truth was never that important. I just bided my time and prayed Annie would never get so bad I’d be forced to send her away. (Ch 3 -her father) 🔸 He’d attended the girl no more than half a dozen times in her entire life, only once since the fever that had rendered her mentally impaired, (Ch 4 - the doctor) 🔸 Moron or no, (Ch 4 - the doctor) 🔸 To be fair to the Trimbles, maybe she was incapable of learning, but Daniel still thought it a shame they hadn’t at least made an effort to give the girl some polish. As it was, her manners and behaviour were those of a six-year-old. (Ch 4 - the doctor) 🔸 a wild little creature, (Ch 4 - the doctor) 🔸 “Little Annie. Her breeding, and all, (Ch 4 - the doctor) 🔸 that girl isn’t mad... She was right as can be until that fever struck. There’s not a thing wrong with that girl that she’ll pass on to her children. I guarantee you that./That girl was as bright as a new penny before that illness struck.’’ (Ch 4 - the doctor - in contradiction to all the other things he has said about her) 🔸 her not being right and all. (Ch 4 - Alex) 🔸 A girl like Annie. Well, she’s bound to be a handful. (Ch 4 - Alex) 🔸 She’s a docile little thing, happy as a clam with her simple pleasures. (Ch 4 - the doctor) 🔸 poor little thing, (Ch 4 - the doctor) 🔸 “Annie is a difficult girl,” (Ch 4 - her mother) 🔸 she looked more like a child than a woman. A terrified child. (Ch 5 - Alex) And note this is at the point of their 'wedding'. 🔸 For all her dimwittedness, Annie seemed to realize.../Despite the vague, confused expression in her large blue eyes, she had a lovely little face./A beautiful shell, that was Annie. There was no way he could accurately determine what degree of intelligence she might possess, but he guessed she had the mind of about a six-year-old, and not a very smart six-year-old, at that. It seemed such a waste. Such a terrible waste. (Ch 5 - Alex) And let me reiterate, that all this was THE FIRST FIVE CHAPTERS of the book alone which has twenty six chapters and an epilogue. You probably got fed of reading it all here, and I get it. It was unrelenting and became exhausting and enraging in the book itself, and I felt so bad for Annie as she was clearly neither mentally disabled nor a child. Other words used throughout against her include; bitch (she was fighting back against abuse by a 'nurse' employed by Alex), mad (by numerous people), feebleminded and trainable (this was Maddy the housekeeper sticking up for her!), imbecile (her mother!!!)... I mean, it just goes on. As for Annie being treated as a child throughout, that came in all ways; from how she was described physically (small, dainty, delicate oh so often) to the more character-based ways (innocent, sweet, Alex's 'responsibility') and what is it about the religious symbolism in this quote, which coincidentally is from the first time they have sex??? Her expression still a little guarded, she blinked as he set her off his lap. He pushed quickly to his feet and added logs onto the grate, nudging them with his boot to position them. Sparks shot up the flue. Then the flames caught on the wood. Alex rubbed his hands clean on his trousers as he turned back to his wife, who knelt on the rug, looking a little too innocent for his peace of mind. Gilded by firelight, in the flowing white gown, with her hair like a cloud around her shoulders, she might have been a religious painting. Or an angel. Sweet, so impossibly sweet. He felt as though he were about to defile something sacred, not a good feeling to have when his conscience was at war with pent-up passion. Whether she was angelic or not, he meant to have her, the devil take his scruples. everyone also proves time and time again that they consider her little more than a child because at no point in the book is she consulted about anything that is done to her, from her being pregnant, how she got pregnant, who the biological father of her baby is, to her 'wedding' which she doesn't even know is a wedding, the reality of actually giving birth, to her being sent away to school after the baby is born. It was just so infuriating. Every single decision about her self and her body was made for her and never was she given the benefit of the doubt, even after it was discovered she was merely deaf and not 'stupid' they STILL kept her in the dark about virtually everything. The whole issue of giving birth was revealed to her after she was yet again traumatised by witnessing a horrible breech birth that one of Alex's horses went through and put two and two together... up until that point this poor woman had believed that she would lay an egg (admittedly that was a funny scene... but also had me scratching my head at the choice made here by the author) which is because she was literally taught nothing at all by her parents (she had no teachers to speak of at all) or even Alex, Maddy or HER FUCKING DOCTOR. And they all knew that she had no clue and left her clueless. And the pregnancy part, she didn't connect the dots that penetration (by the rapist) or making love (with her husband once they got to that part of their relationship) is what leads to babies and still believed the story her mother told her when she was still hearing as a child that they were brought by the fairies. I mean, cute and all... but just... UNBELIEVABLE. (hide spoiler)] WIP [TBC] 🔸 🔸 🔸