I was three days into a bad week when I picked up this ARC. You know the kind—where the world feels a little gray, and you’re not sure if it’s the weather or just you. I sat on my fire escape with the afternoon sun hitting the pages, and something about reading about a woman who was also a little lost made me feel less alone. I guess that’s the point.
Sophie Drear takes a summer job as head gardener at Lilymoor House in coastal Maine. It’s the place she visited with her best friend Harriet ten years ago. Harriet died. Sophie kept their promise alone. Now she’s there to restore the grounds, and she finds a door that appears in different places—leading to a secret garden with a man trapped inside. That’s the setup. But here’s the question the book kept asking me: can you move forward without leaving the people you love behind?
The Stone in Her Chest
Sophie isn’t the loud, dramatic type. She’s quiet. She gardens with her hands in the soil because it’s easier than talking about how she feels. When she finds the hidden garden and meets Cyrus—a grumpy, glasses-wearing man who’s been stuck there—she doesn’t fall into his arms immediately. She pokes him with a stick. Honestly, that moment made me laugh out loud. But what got me was how Sophie talks about Harriet. There’s a line where she says she didn’t let herself cry because she didn’t know who would put her back together. That hit me. Because grief isn’t just sadness—it’s the terror of falling apart with no one there to catch you.
Cyrus is fine. He’s sweet, he understands her, he wears glasses that make readers swoon. But the truth is, I didn’t connect with him the way I did with Sophie. He felt more like he was orbiting her story rather than leading his own. That’s okay, though. Because Sophie is the heart here. She’s the one learning that you can hold grief in one hand and joy in the other.
Why the Garden Works
Poston does something smart. She doesn’t just say grief is like a garden. She shows it. Sophie tends the soil, pulls weeds, watches things die and bloom again. The secret garden is unfinished, overgrown, stuck in time—exactly how grief feels. You’re frozen, waiting for something to change but not knowing how.
The chapter titles are untranslatable words from different languages. I loved that. It made me feel like some emotions don’t have easy names in English, and that’s fine. The imagery is lush without being overwhelming. Flowers, hedges, a goose that terrorizes everyone. It sounds whimsical, and it is, but there’s weight underneath.
What I appreciated most is that Poston doesn’t pretend grief goes away. Sophie doesn’t get over Harriet. She learns to carry her differently. There’s a moment where someone asks Sophie about Harriet not as a dead person, but as a friend. They ask about the things Harriet loved. And Sophie realizes she’s been keeping Harriet locked away in her own heart, thinking that’s how you honor someone. But it’s not. The book says: talking about them, laughing about them, letting them live in stories—that’s how they stay.
The Messy Work of Staying Human
A book that holds your hand while you cry is not the same as a book that gives you easy answers. The Someday Garden does the first thing and doesn’t pretend to do the second. It makes you cry in a way that feels clean, not messy. It gives you a slow-burn romance with actual communication. It reminds you that healing isn’t linear. It shows you a found family that feels real.
What it won’t do is solve your grief. It won’t pretend magic erases pain. It won’t give Cyrus as much depth as Sophie deserves. And if you’re looking for a fast-paced plot or high stakes, this isn’t that book. If you don’t like magical realism, you’ll find the whimsy more frustrating than comforting. If you’re craving dual POV or a romance that’s equally balanced, you might walk away feeling a little hungry.
But for anyone who’s lost someone and feels stuck, who needs permission to feel joy without guilt, this book will land like a hand on your shoulder. It will remind you that you don’t have to choose between holding on and letting go.
The Ten Minutes After
I finished this book and sat in my chair for ten minutes. I didn’t move. I just stared at the wall. Because that’s what a good book does—it empties you out and fills you back up. Poston writes with such softness that you don’t realize how much you’ve been holding until you let go.
The question I’m left with isn’t about the garden or the romance. It’s about me. How do I carry the people I’ve lost without letting their absence define me? How do I bloom in a season I didn’t choose?
I don’t have the answer. But this book made me feel like maybe I can find it.
