This novel.
I have loved the Netflix series and all of its characters so much that I never really thought the book could be quite as good, but it is. It is Madita and Jo and everything I wished to be and have as a child everything I wish to give my children. It may be very traditional in some ways, but it is feminist and powerful in others, just as my monogamous cishet ass. It is full of the imagination I wish I had, full of the dreams I used to have and still have on good days and full of the love that I wish I didn’t have to look for so much, but found at last anyway.
This book smells like the spring air that pours through my windows just now, the sun on my face lying in the grass of a garden full of flowers, it tastes like happy childhood memories and a time before worries, but also like growing up, like loss and broken dreams.