I'm glad I read it as I had read almost everything else in the series - but I didn't enjoy it s much as I remember enjoying the previous books. Maybe I'm just too old now?

I couldn’t ask for a more perfect conclusion to one of the best fictional series ever. Hard to elaborate without spoilers, impossible for me to just abstain from writing anything. Every book evokes a song in my heart (& mind)...with this one, I find myself overcome by Morrissey singing “I want to see all my old friends / And put my arms around them”.

Thank you, Armistead Maupin, for sharing your tales with all of us, for teaching us the phrase and meaning of “logical family”, and for adding more members to each of your readers’ logical families by keeping us updated on, interested in, and involved with the lives of the former residents of 28 Barberry Lane.

I almost cried at the end of this book cause it meant that I was done spending time with these characters. I just love them all so much and Maupin made them feel like real people. While the plot for this one is not as interesting and I really wanted to see the characters interact with each other more, it was still a fitting end for the series that I have grown to love. Mrs Madrigal, Michael Tolliver, Mary Ann Singleton and the rest of the flock feel like family to me now. And I will miss them. But the beauty of literature is that I can see them again anytime I want. All I have to do is just start reading the series again.

Anna Madrigal is the best person ever written I need a million more books of her and I'm so sad not to get them

It's bittersweet to come to the end of the Tales of the City series... I pretty much binge-read them all since I read the first book on the plane, on my way to visit San Francisco a few months ago. I feel as if all of these characters are dear friends of mine by now. Alas, The Days of Anna Madrigal brings this wonderful journey to a close, and how fitting that it all comes back to Anna.

This book is interesting in that - every few chapters - it flashes back to Anna Madrigal's past, showing glimpses of her life when she was a "he"; a young boy growing up in the desert as the son of a brothel owner and deeply in love with the local soda jerk. Given the day and age in which "Andy" grew up, he hides his desires and proclivities to dressing in women's clothes, and nurses his romantic notions in deep secret, afraid to let them out into the open. We also find out the origin of Anna's last name (slight spoiler: yes, her entire name is an anagram, but Maupin spins a deeper tale into it in this book).

A majority of the chapters in this chronicle do bring back some Tales of the City favorites: Michael and his husband Ben, Shawna, Jake, Brian, and Wren from Significant Others (book #5). If you're looking for Mary Ann, there is but a fleeting glance of her here (her story pretty much wraps in the book preceding this). All of these characters, for most of the book, are planning, and eventually embark on, a journey to Burning Man - with Anna, at 92, in tow. I read within other Good Reads reviews of this book that this may have been Maupin's attempts to fictionalize his own personal experiences attending Burning Man. I can easily see how this could be the case, and sadly, found these sections a little tiresome and curiously bizarre, with Michael's occasional "I'm-a- grumpy-old-man-feeling-out-of-sorts-and-disconnected-from-all-of-this" attitude peppered throughout the narrative. (We get it. We all age and feel out-of-it as we get older... it's a little sad that such an endearing character in this novel got a touch jaded and surly later in his life.) Overall, this particular story treatment was a strange way to complete this series, but... c'est la vie. It's been a fun ride and I would easily revisit these books and these marvelous characters all over again. Farewell for now, Barbary Lane!

A 2 1/2 to lukewarm 3. I think Armistead should have stopped a few books ago. At this point the charm of the series is seriously depleted. Having said that, I liked the second half of the book better than the first, because it went more to the heart of the series--the relationship of the characters and especially Anna. Half of this book is told in the past, when Anna, then Andy, is 15 in Nevada, and half in the present. I enjoyed learning Anna's back story. The present day…well, let's just say I think this series was better off stuck in the 80s where it belonged. I found myself impatient that these now 60 something characters were still (Still!) doing so many drugs and I never warmed up to and could frankly care less about the "youngsters" Shwana and Jake. They just seem colorless and uninteresting. Everyone seemed pretty washed out in fact, expect Anna, always a force of nature. Mary Ann makes an all to tried appearance and interjects some much need brio to the narrative.

To be frank, if you are a fan, you might just want to remember them how they were. If you stick it out, at least you get a fitting send off to the amazing Mrs. Madrigal.

I hadn't realised there was another 'Tales of the City' book so when I found out about this one I was really pleased. As soon as it was in my mucky poors I started reading and couldn't put it down till the final page.
It was great to catch up with some of my favourite friends, as the family from Barbary Lane feel to me.
Of course some of the story caught me unawares, and yes there were tears before bedtime, but I'll not reveal why.
Oh and it seems to me that although this one is annotated 'the last' of the series there is still room for more.
I love Maupin's writing and have fingers crossed the story is n't over yet.

My head says 3.5 but my heart says 5. A fitting end to a series that I fell in and out of love with, only to finally read the final three books and fall in love all over again.

Felt like being reunited with old friends.