This is such a charming book.

I've of course seen movie adaptations but never picked this up till now. It was absolutely delightful. The descriptions of nature, all the flowers and wildlife and the moor and garden themselves.....absolutely beautiful. The writing itself was very immersive and it felt like I was right there experiencing the story. I absolutely LOVED Dickon and thought he was the best character out of the whole bunch. I'm kinda jealous of his "animal charmer" ways.

This really talked a lot about how adults can add to children being kinda messed up, like Mary and Colin were. Sure they're both brats.....but there's reasons for that.....and it's mainly adults not treating them correctly or actually parenting them. I really loved the character growth of these characters over the course of the story as well.

Thing I wasn't fond of.....firstly, the mild racism. Not great. Dates the novel in a bad way.
Also, admittedly, though I liked the ending, I would have liked to have seen a little bit more of the other characters in the last scene.

Overall though, a pretty delightful book. I'm so glad I read it in springtime, listening to birds and smelling the earth come to life, just like Mary.