Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - The Secret Garden

This was such a lovely little book! I had to read it for a uni class but I never felt forced to read. This book has actually helped me with a reading slump I’ve been desperate to get out of.

The writing has aged so well and is so whimsical that it is impossible to not get lost in it.

However There are of course some problematic things within the story that reflect the time period, especially to do with race. So keep that in mind if it upsets you.

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bringmybooks's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

If I've said it once, I've said it a million times (&if I've never said it before, I'll say it now): listening to audiobooks of classic children's literature is SUCH a good way to revisit these stories as adults!

✨ 𝗕𝗥𝗜𝗡𝗚 ✨ B̷O̷R̷R̷O̷W̷ B̷Y̷P̷A̷S̷S̷

[First things first - this book was written in 1910 and there are some parts of it that really did not age well (specifically around the language used to describe both India and Indian people). It's not throughout the entire book, more so in the beginning as Mary Lennox is learning not to parrot insensitive & incorrect information that she's been told, but it's still not great.]

I know that I have read The Secret Garden as a kid, but I also know that it's been at least 25 years since then and it was WILD how much I had forgotten about so much of this book. I think the 90s adaptation did a really good job keeping the spirit of the story and characters (other than Ms. Medlock, who is way more severe in the adaptation). There was a lot more character arc and growth in the book, and more exploration of other characters aside from Mary & Colin, which I really appreciated.

This was one of the last Audible credits I used before switching to libro.fm, and the narrator [Carrie Hope Fletcher] did an AMAZING job with the story! I can't speak to any other audio narrators, but if you use Audible this was well worth the credit 🥰 Overall this was one I was glad I got a chance to go back and revisit!

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questingnotcoasting's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I found across this audiobook on Borrowbox and saw it was narrated by Indira Varma. I'd just finished Lords And Ladies which is also read by her and I thought she was so good I decided to listen to this as well. Her accents here were also brilliant and really brought the characters to life. I definitely read this book as a child but my memories of the story might have come mostly from the film because I didn't remember a lot of the details in this. It's still a nice story but it's very much of its time and it was impossible to ignore the way it handles class, disability and race, which did take away some of the charm.

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mathildem's review against another edition

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hopeful lighthearted medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

3.75 ⭐️ - I liked it

Or so I think, at least. I'm a bit up in the air about it, because for the most part I really like the story, the gorgeous writing and the slight magical realism; but at the same time there are (outdated) things throughout the story that really drove me crazy and made me not love the book.

Such as the conversations around race and ugliness, and also as a chronically ill person the way the ending suggested that all illnesses kind of stem from the psyche didn't sit right with me. If at least that point didn't feel so much as general advice to the reader/listener, but more as something that spoke to Colin it would feel better. Because it is good advice to not scare yourself sick, but at least I felt it insinuated more people could get healthy if they wanted too, which isn't always true and can put a lot of blame on the victim.

All in all, I kind of wished throughout the entire book that was reading a reworked version of it, made to fit today's conversations better. I wished it didn't have the obvious racism and ableist beauty standards (read disfigured by Amanda Leduc if you're not sure what I'm aiming at). wished I had the same gorgeous storytelling, the same plot of the children finding each other and themselves, and the escapism without the infuriating small details that always brought me out of the story.

Carrie Hope Fletcher did a fantastic narration job.

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