ErfienaMaliki2
Trixie Georgia has spent sixteen summers in Whangarei, New Zealand - surfboards on the deck, pohutukawa blooming red in December, and her best friend Noel Wilson next door since Year 3.
When a scholarship letter arrives from Hawthorn Hall, a 400-year-old boarding school in North Yorkshire, she trades her Waikato College summer uniform for a charcoal winter blazer that smells like old wool and rain.
Twelve thousand kilometres away, it's dark at 4pm, the trees have no leaves, and everyone already knows who she is: the New Zealand experiment.
Her roommate Beth Miller lends her a hot water bottle without asking. Her best friend Noel watches from the beach on video call, 12 hours ahead. And in the library, on the bottom rung of a ladder wearing socks, she meets Albert William Leonhard.
Albert is quiet, careful handwriting, heir to a title he never mentions. At school he's known as Albert William - not Lord - because at Hawthorn Hall, his parents want him to be a boy before he has to be a Duke.
His father, Mr William Leonhard, 41, the Duke of Leonhard, believes legacy is responsibility. His mother, Mrs Eleanor William Leonhard, 36, the Lady of Leonhard, collects first-edition poetry and is warm only behind closed doors. His older sister Charlotte, 18 and Head Girl, secretly wants to study marine biology far from the estate. And his cousin Andrew Leonhard, 18, Prefect, is everything a Leonhard heir is supposed to be - charismatic, perfect, and complicated for Albert.
Back in New Zealand, Dean Georgia, 40, carpenter and surf instructor, and Bianca Georgia, 35, pediatric nurse who sings while cooking, watch their daughter learn to live in a season that is reversed.
From snow that stays, to a Christmas that isn't Christmas, to a storm that cuts power and leaves only candles and truth in the library - Trixie has to decide if home is a place, a season, or the people who hold the ladder for you.
Genre: Teen Drama / Boarding School / Coming-of-Age / Slow Burn