However, it has not received the same critical acclaim as some of Marsden's other works, including the Tomorrow series, Letters from the Inside and So Much to Tell You.
She was also motivated by a mysterious desire to return to the place she grew up in, surrounded by memories, notably of her parents.
Upon arriving, Winter is welcomed by the caretakers of the property, Ralph and Sylvia, but she insists on staying in her parents’ house, not theirs.
She finds that her house is very run-down and negotiates with Mr. Carruthers, the manager of the estate and of the trust left to her by her parents, to renovate it.
[3] Many reviews agree that Winter appears stubborn and unreasonable at the start of the book, but that she becomes more likeable as the story progresses.
[4][5] Despite agreeing that the finale is satisfying and gripping, most of these reviews state that it is less surprising than the conclusion in Letters from the Inside.
[4][3] Alice Pung has written a glowing endorsement of Marsden's works, stating that his success among young adults is due to the fact that he puts children, their life experience and their point of view at the centre of his writing.
[6] For example, in Winter, there is a section which talks about children killing their mothers (literally and metaphorically) in order to obtain their freedom.
He does not portray teenagers and young adults who are perfectly happy, extremely capable and achieve success in everything they do.
Rather, Marsden's characters are resilient young people who are able to live through sorrow and the most difficult situations, which allows them to fully experience joy.
According to Pung, this accurately reflects human life, which is not aimed at always being happy, but at having a wide range of experiences and emotions.
[8] She thinks that Marsden represents adolescence as a period of life that is completely beset with “pain, loneliness, difficulty in communication [and] lack of love”.
[7] The adolescent characters are left to sort out their problems and find their identity alone, without any adult assistance or support.
[9] For them, the weak or absent adult characters in Marsden's novels are simply an accurate reflection of their life.
[9] Pung notes that as a society, we have no objections to the works of William Shakespeare, despite the fact that his plays portray suicide, violence, anti-Semitism and madness.
She suggests that the reason for this is that Shakespeare's works are far removed from our daily life, which means that we can explain any moral atrocities as a product of the culture or the era.
[9] Society is afraid of corrupting young adults if they read novels in which these horrific events happen in a context that is so close to their own.
[9] Furthermore, she suggests that novels about these events help young people who undergo them to understand that their life and experience matters, that they are not alone.
[10] The second source of inspiration for this novel was a short story that Marsden wrote, but never published, about a girl who was trying to uncover the truth about how her mother had died.