Into the Bright Open: A Secret Garden Remix (Remixed Classics, Book 8) - Cherie Dimaline

Category: Historical Fiction, LGBT, Lesbian, Teen & Young Adult
Language: English
Keywords: Chapterized Remixed Classics Retelling YA

Written by Cherie Dimaline
Read by Brefny Caribou
Format: MP3
Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins

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This queer YA reimagining of The Secret Garden subverts the cishet and white status quo of the original in a tale of family secrets wonderful and horrifying.

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—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…

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The Remixed Classics Series:
01) A Clash of Steel: A Treasure Island Remix by C.B. Lee
02) So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix by Bethany C. Morrow
03) Travelers Along the Way: A Robin Hood Remix by Aminah Mae Safi
04) What Souls Are Made Of: A Wuthering Heights Remix by Tasha Suri
05) Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix by Anna-Marie McLemore
06) My Dear Henry: A Jekyll & Hyde Remix by Kalynn Bayron
07) Teach the Torches to Burn: A Romeo & Juliet Remix by Caleb Roehrig
08) Into the Bright Open: A Secret Garden Remix by Cherie Dimaline
09) Most Ardently: A Pride & Prejudice Remix by Gabe Cole Novoa (2024)