My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Spice Rating: 🌶️🌶️
Title: The Someday Garden
Author: Ashley Poston
Pages: 400
Listening Hours: 11 hours 25 min (approx.)
Format: audiobook (Libby)
Publication Date: 6/16/26
Categories: Women’s Fiction, Romance, Contemporary, Magical Realism
The new head gardener at the enchanting Lilymoor House stumbles upon a secret garden . . . with a mysterious man trapped inside, in the next magical novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Sounds Like Love and The Seven Year Slip.
When Sophie Drear plans her escape to coastal Maine for the summer—for a temporary job revitalizing the storied grounds at Lilymoor House—she doesn’t expect to fall in love.
But she does: With the beguiling land, the fragrant flowers, and the towering hedge maze. With the quirky staff and the enigmatic woman who owns the place.
And then, the door appears. Never in the same place twice, it leads her to a secret, and unfinished, garden with a frustrated thundercloud of a man trapped inside.
This mysterious garden is not the only sign that the future of Lilymoor is unstable: the foliage resists Sophie’s careful nurturing, vines threaten to strangle the hedges, and the manor’s owner has wild ideas about who will take over when she retires—including her inconveniently attractive nephew who is also there just for the summer.
Despite herself, Sophie has come to care for the residents of Lilymoor just as much as she cares for its grounds. With the help of one man on the outside of the secret garden, and one man on the inside, she might be the only person who can figure out exactly what Lilymoor needs to bloom once more.
Content Warning: death, grief
+ This author does magical realism so well, and the narrator did such an amazing job. I was sucked into this story. There were actually times in this audiobook I wish I was reading the ebook so I could highlight phrases that touched me.
+ My favorite part of the story had to be about Sophie journey through grief and learning to come to peace with her best-friend’s passing. Their story was so sweet, especially with their adoration of Lilymoor and their love for each other was so real that I was heartbroken for Sophie and I related to her a lot in how she dealt with her grief. So I saw a lot of myself in Sophie and I think people who have lost someone like that will relate as well. But it was so gratifying to see Sophie try to move forward – the ending even made me cry.
+ I love the found family Sophie has with her coworkers at Lilymoor. They all had their quirks and she tried to not getting close to anyone since her job was temporary, but I love how Lilymoor and the people eventually take root in her heart. Lilymoor is what sounds like from all the descriptions, a gorgeous garden – it made me want to visit! I love the analogy of a garden as it is to life. So many times throughout the book Sophie says life is like a garden – nothings stays forever, it is always changing, growing and dying.
+~ For me, I feel like the romance wasn’t as much a focus (for me at least), as the grief journey. But it was definitely an aspect of helping Sophie move on because she felt stuck in life – in her career, her love life (lack of), just everything because she was grieving Harrie so badly. Cyrus, is the man she meets in this secret door that leads to a garden – he is actually Lilymoor’s owner’s nephew, who has good memories of the estate but also traumatic ones. Sophie meets with him and they eventually fall in love, but he’s stuck in a different space of time there in that garden. A lot of the story feels like a cozy read, where Cyrus and Sophie get to know one another. There is some spice.
+~ There were times I wanted more explanation about the magic in the garden but I guess that’s just me digging for information and not going with the flow. For the most part I went with the flow, but there were times I wondered about why timed moved slowly for Cyrus in the garde, etc…
Final Thoughts:
This one touched my heart because losing someone and experience grief was something very relatable to me in this book. I loved seeing Sophie learn to enjoy life again whether it was when she was falling in love, or knowing she wanted to stay on at Lilymoor or opening up and getting to know her coworkers. It’s a touching story about friendship and strength to keep going and that ending made me cry.
Read if you like:
- magical realism
- grief journey, growth
- found family
- romance
Book Links:
Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
Other Books I’ve Read From This Author:
Sounds Like Love by. Ashley Poston | Audiobook – 4 stars/🌶️
A Novel Love Story by. Ashley Poston | Book Review – 3.5 stars
The Dead Romantics by. Ashley Poston | Book Review – 4.5 stars
