Best Books About Sibling Relationships by L. M. Montgomery
L. M. Montgomery created one of the most beloved families in children’s literature, and at its center stand two siblings: Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, the shy bachelor and his stern sister who adopt Anne Shirley. Their relationship - the quiet devotion of a brother and sister who have spent their whole lives together - is the emotional foundation of Anne of Green Gables, and it is one of the great portraits of sibling love ever written.
Montgomery, who grew up on Prince Edward Island, wrote about siblings with deep understanding. Her books are full of brothers and sisters, chosen sisters, cousins and the fierce friendships that stand in for family. She knew that siblings can be your sharpest critics and your safest harbor, sometimes in the same afternoon. Here are her books, examined through the bond between siblings.
Anne of Green Gables
Anne of Green Gables is the essential Montgomery book, and its sibling relationship is between Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert. They are brother and sister who have run Green Gables together for years - he, gentle and tongue-tied, doing the outdoor work; she, brisk and disapproving, keeping the house. When they adopt a boy to help with the farm and receive Anne instead, their different responses are a portrait of sibling complementarity: Matthew falls for Anne instantly and silently; Marilla resists, then slowly, grudgingly, completely surrenders.
The novel is also about chosen siblings. Anne, an orphan with no family, finds in Diana Barry the sister she never had - their “bosom friendship” is one of the most famous friendships in literature, complete with sworn vows and a shared imagination. And Matthew and Marilla, who never married, are each other’s family: when Matthew dies in the second book, the loss nearly destroys Marilla, and Anne - the child they chose - becomes her companion. Montgomery’s point is that siblings are the family you grow with, but family can also be the people you choose.
Anne of Avonlea
The second Anne book introduces more siblings and deepens the family picture. Anne, now a teacher at Avonlea school, teaches the twins Davy and Dora Keith - a boy and a girl, twins but complete opposites, Davy mischievous and Dora prim. Watching Anne learn to handle them is Montgomery’s portrait of how sibling differences shape a household. Meanwhile, Marilla and Anne now share Green Gables as companions, the adopted daughter becoming the sister Marilla never had.
The book is gentle and episodic, and its sibling theme is light - but it matters for the series’ arc. Anne is becoming the center of a chosen family, and Montgomery is showing that family grows by accretion: the people you love become your siblings, your children, your people.
Anne of the Island and Anne of Windy Poplars
As Anne leaves for college and then teaches in Summerside, Montgomery continues to build her portrait of siblings. At Redmond College, Anne rooms with three other girls who become her sisters in all but name, and the book’s great romance - Anne and Gilbert - grows out of a rivalry that began when Gilbert called her “carrots” and she broke her slate over his head. Their relationship is a portrait of what siblings and rivals become: two people who measure themselves against each other, who understand each other’s strengths, and who finally choose each other.
Anne of Windy Poplars and Anne of the Island also feature the recurring motif of the lonely only child - the girls Anne meets who have no siblings, no family, and who are drawn to Anne’s warmth. Montgomery keeps reminding us that sibling love is a form of abundance, and that those without it feel the lack.
Anne’s House of Dreams and the Later Anne Books
Anne’s House of Dreams is the book where Anne and Gilbert marry, and where the sibling theme completes its arc: Anne becomes a mother. The later books - Anne of Ingleside, Rainbow Valley, Rilla of Ingleside - follow her children, a new generation of siblings growing up at Ingleside. Rilla of Ingleside, the final book, is the series’ emotional peak: the First World War takes the Blythe boys, and the family of siblings is tested by loss. Rilla, the youngest, the one everyone coddles, becomes the heroine - the same arc Montgomery gave Ginny Weasley decades before Rowling wrote her.
The Emily Books
Montgomery’s Emily of New Moon trilogy is the other great sibling portrait in her work, and it is more autobiographical than Anne. Emily Byrd Starr is an orphan raised by her mother’s family, and her closest relationship is with her cousin Jimmy - a bond that is half-sibling, half-friend, entirely devoted. The Emily books are darker than Anne’s, with a more complicated family, and they show Montgomery’s belief that siblings and cousins can be the only witnesses to a lonely childhood.
What Montgomery Teaches About Siblings
Montgomery’s central lesson is that sibling love is quiet, practical and absolutely necessary. Matthew and Marilla never say they love each other; they show it in a lifetime of shared work, shared silence and shared worry. Montgomery also insists that the bonds of family can be chosen: Anne’s friendships become sisterhoods, and her adopted family becomes her blood. Her books argue that what matters is not the accident of birth but the daily practice of love - setting the table, worrying, teasing, showing up.
She is also honest that siblings are not always kind. Gilbert’s teasing, Davy’s mischief, the rivalries of cousins - Montgomery’s families are full of friction, and she treats it as the normal weather of family life. The love is underneath, steady and unquestioned, and the friction is how it is expressed.
The Orphan’s Longing for Siblings
It is worth remembering how radical Montgomery’s portrait of the orphan was. Anne arrives at Green Gables desperate for family in every form - parents, certainly, but also siblings. Her invented friend, the imaginary Katie Maurice who lives in the looking glass, is a child’s substitute for the sister she has never had; her early hostility toward Gilbert is partly the wariness of a child who has never learned to trust a peer. Montgomery shows that the orphan does not simply long for parents; she longs for the whole texture of family life - the teasing, the rivalries, the someone-your-own-age in the next bed. That is why Anne’s adoption works so completely: Matthew and Marilla give her not just a home but a sibling-like companion in Diana, a rival-turned-friend in Gilbert, and eventually children of her own. The Anne books are, among everything else, a portrait of the orphan building a family from nothing - and of siblings as one of the things a family is for.
Choosing Where to Start
If you have never read Montgomery, start with Anne of Green Gables - it is the essential book and the best introduction to her world. If you want the full sibling arc, read the Anne series in order through Rilla of Ingleside. If you want her more autobiographical and slightly darker treatment of family, Emily of New Moon is the book.
The Chosen Sisterhood of Avonlea
Montgomery’s great contribution to the literature of siblings is her insistence that sisterhood can be chosen. Anne and Diana’s “bosom friendship” - sworn with vows, tested by mishap, deepened by shared imagination - is the template for a thousand friendships in girls’ literature that followed, and it works precisely because Montgomery treats it with the seriousness of a blood bond. The girls are not related, but they are sisters in every way that matters: they share secrets, defend each other, and mourn each other’s sorrows. When Diana is forbidden to play with Anne after the currant wine incident, the separation is written like a family tragedy. Montgomery’s point is that the friendships of girlhood are not rehearsals for real relationships; they are real relationships, with the same intensity, jealousy and devotion as the bonds of blood.
The later books extend this chosen sisterhood across generations: Anne’s daughters and their friends, the girls of Ingleside and Rainbow Valley, form the same fierce bonds. Montgomery never stops arguing that family is a practice - that the people who share your childhood, chosen or given, are your siblings, and that the love you build with them is as permanent as anything written in a family Bible.
Siblings Divided by Temperament
Montgomery is also a sharp observer of how differently siblings can be wired. Davy and Dora Keith - twins who could not be less alike - are her comic portrait of this truth, but the serious version runs through her whole work. The Cuthberts themselves are the deep example: Matthew and Marilla, raised in the same house, shaped by the same losses, and yet utterly different in temperament - one silent and tender, one brisk and stern. Montgomery shows that siblings are not copies of each other but complements, each carrying qualities the other lacks, and that a family is strongest when it makes room for both. It is the same insight Alcott gave the March sisters, rendered in Montgomery’s gentler key: difference is not the enemy of family feeling; it is the reason family feeling exists.
The Sibling as the Anchor of Home
Montgomery’s most consistent idea is that siblings are what make a place a home. Green Gables is not the house - it is Matthew and Marilla, the brother and sister who have made it theirs together, and the child they take in who completes it. When Matthew dies, the novel’s grief is double: Marilla loses her brother, the companion of her entire life, and Anne loses the gentlest father she ever knew. Montgomery shows that the two surviving characters must become each other’s family in a new way - the stern sister and the imaginative girl, no longer guardian and child but companions - and the book’s final warmth comes from watching that new bond form. The idea recurs throughout her work: the people you live with, day after day, are the ones who make any place home, and the sibling is the longest of those relationships. It is a quiet, deeply comforting vision, and it is one of the reasons her books have been read aloud in family parlors for over a century.
If you want to explore more, our guide to meaningful respect and manners for adults looks at the codes that govern Montgomery’s world, and our guide to meaningful community and belonging for adults explores how Avonlea and its families create belonging. The relationships section is full of recommendations like these.
Conclusion
L. M. Montgomery wrote the definitive novels about the quiet, unbreakable love of siblings. Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert - brother and sister, companions for life - are the heart of Green Gables, and the family Anne builds around herself is Montgomery’s proof that siblinghood can be chosen as well as given. Read the Anne books, and you will understand why generations have wanted to live at Green Gables: because it is full of the people who know you and stay anyway.
