Into the Bright Open: A Secret Garden Remix (Remixed Classics)

Into the Bright Open: A Secret Garden Remix (Remixed Classics)

Cherie Dimaline

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

From award-winning and acclaimed author of The Marrow Thieves, Cherie Dimaline, comes an enchanting story of family, healing, and girls reclaiming control of their own lives, part of the Remixed Classics series.Mary Lennox didn’t think about death until the day it knocked politely on her bedroom door and invited itself in. When a terrible accident leaves her orphaned at fifteen, she is sent to the wilderness of the Georgian Bay to live with an uncle she's never met.At first the impassive, calculating girl believes this new manor will be just like the one she left in Toronto: cold, isolating, and anything but cheerful, where staff is treated as staff and never like family. But as she slowly allows her heart to open like the first blooms of spring, Mary comes to find that this strange place and its strange people—most of whom are Indigenous self-named "halfbreeds"—may be what she can finally call home.Then one night Mary discovers Olive, her cousin who has been hidden away in an attic room for years due to a "nervous condition." The girls become fast friends, and Mary wonders why this big-hearted girl is being kept out of sight and fed medicine that only makes her feel sicker. When Olive's domineering stepmother returns to the manor, it soon becomes clear that something sinister is going on.With the help of a charming, intoxicatingly vivacious Metis girl named Sophie, Mary begins digging further into family secrets both wonderful and horrifying to figure out how to free Olive. And some of the answers may lie within the walls of a hidden, overgrown and long-forgotten garden the girls stumble upon while wandering the wilds...

Publication Year: 2023


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  • FeministPinko
    Mar 11, 2025
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  • Crim_321
    May 02, 2025
    Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

    ~~Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan for the ARC!~~

    3.5/5 stars

    I haven't read the original The Secret Garden yet, despite my copy staring holes into the back of my head, so I didn't really have anything to compare the retelling to. But I'm glad to say this was pretty good.

    Mary's character growth was very satisfying. Her initial sullen and withdrawn personality gradually blooming into joy and freedom whenever she goes out into the wild of the Georgian Bay was done very well. I also really liked her relationships with the side characters, but particularly Olive and Sophie because they were really cute.

    The writing really reminisces of older books but in a good way, where you can still understand and get properly swept up in the pretty descriptions and metaphors.

    Even though I enjoyed the book, I didn't connect to it that much. Additionally, the ending came very quick after the climax. Immediately after uncle ex-machina burst through the door the literal last minute to find out Rebecca's the big bad, it skips to a year later to show everyone's as happy as can be right before it ends. It felt very unceremonious and left me feeling unimpressed.

    But, overall, this was still a good read. I feel as though people who adore the original book would appreciate this one more than me.

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