Return to the Secret Garden

by Susan Moody

Looks at the grown-up lives of Mary, Colin, and Dickon, characters from "The Secret Garden," from the battlefields of France to 1920s London, to India under the Raj

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical, Novels, Retellings

Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

She grew up in Oxford then moved to Tennessee for 10 years. She published two historical novels and the novelisation of the Nescafe Gold Blend advertisements under the pen name Susannah James. More recently she has also used the nom de plume, Susan Madison. She is a former Chairman of the Crime Writer's Association, served as World President of the International Association of Crime Writers, and was elected to the prestigious Detection Club. Susan Moody has given numerous courses on writing crime fiction and continues to teach creative writing in England, France, Australia, the USA and Denmark

Reviews

[Manybooks · Rating 1 out of 5]

I do not (and this thankfully so) remember all that much about Susan Moody's Return to the Secret Garden except that I indeed have found it absolutely and totally horrid and consider it a massive and unforgivable insult to both Frances Hodgson Burnett and anyone who has read and loved The Secret Garden.

Now indeed, I would not have minded if the author, if Susan Moody had altered her featured characters somewhat (I mean, children do grow up, and they do change), and I would also not have even minded some controversial, adult topics appearing in Return to the Secret Garden. However, Susan Moody changing Colin into a bisexual, who calls out Dickons's name while being intimate with Mary and so on and so on was and still is not in any even conceivable way my idea of a remotely acceptable sequel to The Secret Garden by any stretch of the (of my) imagination.

And yes, for those individuals (for those readers) who might try to claim that Susan Moody's writing is interesting and that one should give this book a chance, well, I really did try to give Return to the Secret Garden more than a chance. But the massive changes to the characters (characters whom I adore, and to whom I have always had an almost magical attachment) and the fact that the novel tends to read rather like a cheap and gossipy trash-romance has made me despise Return to the Secret Garden to such an extent that I truly and honestly never was really even able to notice or more to the point care all that much about the author's writing style, about Susan Moody's narrative flow, word building etc., so massively angered was I at and by the contents, the themes (and indeed, Return to the Secret Garden is also one of the very few books that I actually ever seriously considered burning or tossing into the garbage).

I thus would honestly NOT recommend Return to the Secret Garden to anyone, but especially if you are a true fan of Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, you should totally and absolutely avoid Return to the Secret Garden like the proverbial plague (as it, as the story presented will likely anger you in much the same way it has angered and infuriated me). And please note that this is my personal opinion. And finally, if there are readers who have actually and in fact enjoyed Return to the Secret Garden, that is absolutely fine and not in any way a problem for me (but personally, I have vehemently despised and continue to despise Return to the Secret Garden as one of the most distasteful and frustrating pieces of groan-worthy junk I have ever read).

[Taxandria · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Secret Garden is one of my very much beloved books, a testament to a more innocent time, a story of life, healing, forgiveness and the triumph over evil, depression and grief. The characters are described so well, you feel you know them inside and out when you're finished reading the book.

I wonder if Susan Moody ever read The Secret Garden, because she has these characters doing things I just can't even imagine them doing. The motivations are all contrived to suit the author's insistence on tawdriness. She seems to crank open your brain and pour into it all the vile things promoted in the past few decades: adultery, death in graphic description, angst, disrespect, lust, selfishness, and sickness. The opposite of what the Secret Garden is about.

The writing is fine, the mechanics are there, but the characters are not Mary, Dickon, and Colin. I can't see Colin calling out Dickon's name while he's in an intimate situation with Mary. I also had a hard time believing Colin was gay or bisexual. I also had a hard time believing Mary just fell into bed with Dickon with no commentary on how she professed her feelings for him or vice versa. I don't understand Dickon patronizing prostitutes, or having an affair with Mary while she is married to someone else. I don't see Mary jumping into marriage with a guy she hardly knows, when we ALL KNOW her heart is really with Dickon. Or that she would be having sex with a man while her baby dies outside. Good God did the crud never END?

These characters were shameful. They seemed driven by evil itself, driven to destroy all the nurturing and life giving health the Secret Garden developed in them in the first book.

Too much time was spent describing Dickon's war experiences. I don't need to know that much about wounds, blood and maggots, thank you. Of course he was given Post Traumatic Stress disorder, because I believe the author couldn't think of anything else to flesh out his character with. Perhaps consulting the original book would give Ms. Moody a clue on how Dickon would have acted and spoken (anyone else notice his entire dialect was erased? Was it too much to ask that Moody preserve one of those charming things about this boy? I know it's a lot of research, but she could have gone the distance and at least shown us that she cared enough to try!)

I bought this book hoping for a continuation of the characters I truly loved from the original book, but what I witnessed here was their systematic pop-culture slaughter.

This could have been a beautiful story about real love and friendship and bonds that we form in life. Instead, the characters were forced to turn away from the peace they'd achieved in the original story.

They can grow up and learn about the horrors of life without contributing to them. This is bad finfic and should have only been published somewhere in the dark recesses of the internet. I can't believe a publisher paid for this. I can't believe I did, either.

[Julia · Rating 1 out of 5]

This might be the worst book ever. And the fact that it is supposed to be a sequel to such a great classic just makes it more painful. I can think of no good reason to read this book. I wish I hadn't.

[Alicia · Rating 2 out of 5]

While probably a realistic look at what could have happened to these characters had they lived through WWI and WWII, I didn't like the pessimistic tone and hated the things she had them do to one another. I prefer to remember Colin, Mary, and Dickon as happy children who have just discovered love rather than as adults who have been scarred by it.

[Amy · Rating 1 out of 5]

if you're a fan of the original secret garden, don't read this. it's a horrible story and the worst sequel i've ever read.

[OAV401 · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think a better assessment of this book would be "Loathed it with every fiber of my being," rather than "Didn't like it."

[Diane · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was terrible, it was so bad that it was possibly the ONLY book I have ever thrown away after reading. I know it is probably what likely would have happened, but I don't want to read a book for the reality factor.

[Rachel · Rating 1 out of 5]

A big let-down. You need to know your characters in order to be able to write about them.

[Ryan]

If this book were any worse it actually might have ruined the original for me.

[Allie · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is appalling. It's a sexed up (not to mention messed up) fan fiction of a true classic, which I might add is a children's story. I didn't expect to pick this up and have it be the exact polar opposite of what The Secret Garden was.

TSG was a coming-into-oneself story in the springtime. A short parcel of time, easily digestible and sweet. Great read, especially for girls. Sequels in general are meant to hold the same mood and tone of the first books- this is a given. Moody's syntax was similar to Burnetts, and honestly I commend that- it's difficult to do well. But the mood of Burnett's innocent little heartwarmer compared to the ups-and-downs roller coaster ride of the "sequel" is disgusting. If I didn't have a bookworm's commitment to see how she ended up hashing them all together at the end, I would throw it away right this minute. I marked this as "read", only because I'm so close to finishing that I'll probably be done with this stupid thing by tonight (thank goodness).

"Didn't like" is an understatement. If you've read The Secret Garden and treasure it, don't read this. If you're passive about it, do so if only for the sake that it's written okay and you're bound to want to chuck a rock at it- which is the intended point of literature, anyway. Finally, if you haven't read The Secret Garden, you missed out on some childhood. :)

[skein · Rating 3 out of 5]

I must be the only person ever who
1. loved The Secret Garden with every fiber of my being
and
2. found this to be a worthy sequel.

Yeah, I usually detest 'sequels' written 100 years after the original was published. Yeah, stuff happened that I didn't want to happen. No, it's not perky and cheerful and filled with the singing butterflies of childhood innocence, like the Burnett's original.

But this one doesn't betray or misrepresent or alter beyond recognition any of the characters - and I can't think of a higher compliment.

And I still love that irascible, cantankerous, agonizingly difficult Mary Lennox.

[Kyle · Rating 1 out of 5]

Poorly imagined, poorly written, poorly executed. Frances Hodgson Burnett is probably rolling over in her grave.

[Diane · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is, quite possibly, the only book that I ever threw away after reading. It was one of the most depressing things I have ever read.

[A. E. S. · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF God help us.

[Della Tingle · Rating 1 out of 5]

I write my little reviews for myself. I come across a book and wonder if it read it, and if so, if I liked it. My little reviews help me remember. I don’t write them for anyone to actually read other than myself, but I hope someone reads this one. If you love Francis Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, this abomination of a book will surely rot your soul. Why I continued reading until the end, I can only suppose was because I needed some sort of closure. While The Secret Garden is a beloved children’s book, this is a book NO child should ever read, nor should anyone else. I cannot begin to imagine why Susan Moody chose to bestow the horrors of her writing upon Burnett’s readers. For, I assure you, Moody is no Burnett: she is the opposite of. The selfishness of Mary in Return to the Secret Garden is so appalling, I cannot even think of any worse character. This book made and makes my stomach hurt. I am putting it in the trash where it belongs.

[Karen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very disappointing.

I felt the love triangle between the three somewhat undermined the strong bonds of friendship they had forged in the original novel.

I can accept that Colin may have been gay but I cannot believe he would be the type of person to have liaisons with men in the grounds of Misselthwaite; it just makes him seem sleazy.

I wasn't expecting a fairytale but this simply didn't live up to what I hoped it would be.

[Mitzi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolutely awful--if you loved The Secret Garden, don't read this!!

[Audrey Dubois · Rating 5 out of 5]

AUDREY'S ONE-SENTENCE BOOK REVIEWS

This book is tragically overburdened by reviews that say "it lacks the charm and whimsy of the original" like, you'd be lacking in charm and whimsy too if you witnessed the horrors of World War One

[Kerry Dackombe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed it. An engaging story, quaint, but also edgy.

[Sandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I read this particular book.... but I am not sure. I know I read a sequel to The Secret Garden ..... something I was not quite sure I wanted to do as it is such a magical book about such a magical time in the lives of 3 children.... but I read it, whatever the title.... and it was okay. Of course the magic was no longer there as the children aged and moved into adulthood but the characters were well crafted and believable and I was held in suspense from beginning to end.... and I didn't walk away decrying the book and thinking it blasphemy for not doing some kind of justice to the lives of Mary, Colin and Dicken.... It was, instead, poignant and sad but realistic and very conceivable.

[Angela · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is supposed to be an adult version of juv book The Secret Garden--taking up the story after they become adults. I only read about 2 chapters--it is the continuing relationship of the 3 main characters and how they interlock for a lifetime, but I was unable to slog through it. Interesting flashbacks helping explain whom she married and possible reasons why, regrets and character development, but i could not keep the characters straight after others were introduced. It would have helped to reread the original before taking this on. I hadn't read it seriously as a child.

[Lindsay · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a fan of The Secret Garden since my mother first read it to me complete with Yorkshire accents, I hated this book. I feel that knowing what I know of Frances Hodgson Burnett and her work, she would not be pleased. The characters were not believable or true to their originally written selves. That being said, it wasn't a terrible story if you don't think of it as a sequel to a really wonderful and sweet book, so I'm giving it two stars, which in my book means, "it was ok." I had to kind of separate it from TSG to enjoy it in anyway.

[Claudia · Rating 2 out of 5]

The essence of a sequel book is that the characters you knew in the initial book are extended into the sequel. New situations are extrapolated and the arc of life is predicted. Is this the way I imagine the trio from "The Secret Garden" will grow up? Maybe not. Maybe I like happier endings with less trauma and drama...but it was set such that the three would become adults during the first and second world wars in England. Ultimately I felt the book could have been edited down by about 100 pages.

[Rachel Danielle · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sad injustice to the characters of the original story.

Perhaps, if it had been a book with completely independent characters, independent and unconnected to the original story, it would have been a better read, because there are elements of the story that were very good - but not genuine to the characters.

I can see how the author's talent for her other genres/works - which include a crime and a thriller series - were woven into what might have been a good read, again, had it been about other characters vs Mary, Colin, and Dickon, of the beloved Secret Garden.

[Pattie · Rating 2 out of 5]

After reading Susan Moody's author bio on Goodreads, I have a better understanding of her detail inclusion. Of course a crime writer would include the horrors of war to include graphic imagery.

Several other reviews will detail the mid-characterization of Mary, Colin, and Dickon, so I won't do the same.

I did not like this book at all, but I give it two stars because of the historical details and the details from the original Secret Garden novel.

[aem]

hated this book!

appalling!!!

there were no negative stars to give! we have to rate it with one star to indicate we absolutely did NOT like the book at all!!!

this kind of ruined my appreciation of the original!!!

wish i had not read it!

[Elizabeth Meadows · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't remember how long ago I read this, but I was reminded of it when I heard a friend talk about reading The Secret Garden. This "sequel" book was such a big disappointment that I would not recommend to anyone who loves the characters from The Secret Garden.

[Ellie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolutely hated it and threw out my copy so no one would get it from me in any way, shape, or form.

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one is definitely not a children's book. If I didn't know the original so well (which yes, I re-read before I read this one) I might have given it higher marks.... but it is not quite the sequel that I would have wished for. However, it is one opinion and fairly well written. And, given the children's circumstances in the original (re-read as an adult), it is not so far fetched in a real world.... I don't really like this real world....

[Harriet Pears · Rating 1 out of 5]

Picked this up from a charity stall – and about to put it in the recycling box. Never done that to a book before, but wouldn't wish to inflict the unrelenting misery on any unsuspecting person who might, like me, be suckered in by the Secret Garden connection.
Had it been written as the lives of three totally original characters damaged by the effects of the First World War, it might have some merit. As it is... no, thank you. Leave Mary, Colin and Dickon as children, 'full of laughter'.