The Someday Garden by Ashley Poston
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The Someday Garden follows Sophie Drear, who gets hired for the Summer to be the new Head Gardner at the captivating Lilymoor House. This enchanting property on the coast of Maine is one Sophie has been familiar with for years.
When Sophie’s job at the New York Botanical Garden starts to feel stale, and she’s offered the chance to work at Lilymoor for the Summer, she feels compelled to accept.
Lilymoor is just as lush and enchanting as she remembered, but the grounds are also in need of some TLC. It’s not just her staying at the property either, there’s a couple other staff members and the vibrant older woman who owns it.
As Sophie settles in, she feels renewed by the magical property. She can breath again, and she starts to really care about the future of Lilymoor and all who reside there.
The most fascinating aspect for Sophie is the door that appears, seemingly at random, allowing her to enter a secret garden. Within the secret garden is a handsome and mysterious man, seemingly trapped within its walls.
I don’t feel like I’m doing a great job summarizing what you’ll find within these pages, but honestly, it’s a difficult one to try and describe. What I can tell you is how magical and emotional this story is. Poston certainly knows how to squeeze your heart to within an inch of its life.
Poston is the only author who consistently makes me cry, and I love her for it. The way she examines different kinds of love, not just romantic love, feels so special to me.
This is such a gorgeous novel. I was swept away to the Coast of Maine, an area I’m very familiar with, and absolutely came to adore everything about Lilymoor House and its quirky group of residents.
The Someday Garden has many different aspects to enjoy, but for me the emotional progression Sophie experiences during her time at Lilymoor truly stands out.
Prior to her arrival, she’s suffered a terrible personal loss, and I feel like we got to see all aspects of her grief and self-discovery. The way Poston explored such a sensitive and relatable experience as grief, I cannot praise it enough. There’s such care and grace in the way she tackles these types of topics. No one does it better.
I also feel like Poston has such a unique and magical sense of Contemporary storytelling. The tone she sets and the ability to pull a Reader in, it gets me every time. On the surface, this might not seem like my kind of book, but it certainly turned out to be. This now lives in my heart rent free.
I would definitely recommend this to Contemporary Romance Readers, particularly those who enjoy Magical Realism within their stories, or anyone who has enjoyed Ashley Poston’s work in the past. This is right up there with The Dead Romantics and The Seven Year Slip for me.
Thank you so much to the publisher, Berkley, for providing me with copy to read and review. I cannot wait to see what Poston comes up with next. Her creativity knows no bounds!