How do you take the Secret Garden, put it in an even more goth setting than the moors, and somehow make it...boring? Our Mary Lennox (Lottie) is orphaned and has to go live iwth her uncle in the land of hte dead. That could be a cool story. OR the story of how colors are magic and losing them is a sign of grief, and hope can be regained, that's another story that could be written. Or a story about a child ghost being stuck in a garden to harvest his grief, that's cool. But as it is, all these elements come together in a jumble in which each detracts from the next. Moreover the world-building is incomplete, and the imagery overly Christian. I really really wanted to love this book. Perhaps that's why I think so poorly of it now, because I had high standards. But the author even made Dickon weak! I love Dickon, so that piece on its own would have been a deal breaker for me.