The Garden is the kind of book best gone into without knowing much so I'll try to just speak to generalities. First, Newman's characterization is excellent. The sisters jump off the page, fully-formed. The prose is gorgeous and hypnotic, this is one of the best things I have read in a long time in terms of the writing. Nick Newman has created a dark, disturbing world that will leave you thinking about it for weeks after you are done with it.

This was such a strange and haunting read, and scratched the itch for dark fiction that I didn't even know I had. I went into The Garden semi-blind, having only read the first line of the blurb before deciding this was an ARC I needed to get my hands on, and I am so grateful that I did so. Centering around two elderly sisters living in an isolated garden, The Garden is much like its titular landscape: insular and spare, yet devastatingly beautiful. Although inhabitants Evelyn and Lily have been there their whole lives, they (and you) leave this book forever changed.

I can't say much more without spoiling the premise, but suffice it to say the characters are what make this book unforgettable, and what incredible characters they are. Newman has such an eye for detail and for character-work, so much so that I'd definitely class this as literary fiction. Older sister Evelyn has lived her entire life as a protector of Lily and the garden. Tasked with being the strong one while their mother was alive, Evelyn now ensures that she and Lily follow her posthumous rules to the letter so that the sisters and the garden can continue to live. What is beyond the garden does not matter to Evelyn, nor what came before it. All that matters is staying true to the almanac their mother left behind and keeping the daily chores going, a task made harder and harder by the passage of time. Younger sister Lily lives in a frivolous state of being, reliving a childhood Evelyn can no longer remember. Decking herself out in her mother's jewelry, Lily practices ballet routines, plays games of hide and seek, and sneaks bites of pie, all while longing for something greater.

But strange things are happening: the beehives are moving, there are footsteps and shadows from within the larger house (of which the sisters only inhabit the kitchen, due to the rest of the house being filled with poisonous "men's things"), and food is disappearing. Lily blames her sister's memory, but when Evelyn finds a nameless boy hiding in the garden, their lives all change. The boy forces them to confront the way they've been living, to confront the reality that there may be an outside world, to make them question the how and why of the garden itself in a way that's so poignant without ever being saccharine.

What struck me the most is how much this resonated with me, how much I think this will resonate with others. I can't definitely say (my copy did not have the acknowledgments in it yet), but I would bet actual money this was a covid novel. The experience of intense isolation, the murky passage of time, the distrust and fear of the outside world...Newman's Garden brought all those emotions racing back to me in a way that was heartbreakingly cathartic. I was sobbing my way through the last 50 pages, while also frantically turning them to know Evelyn was okay.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Penguin Group Putnam, and Nick Newman for gifting me this e-ARC in exchange for my honest review!

A post-apocalyptic Grey Gardens - very original, very haunting.

This is about two elderly sisters living alone in what seems to be a post-apocalyptic world caused by extreme heat and climate change. Their lives and routines are disrupted when they find a boy inside their property walls, and their dynamics and clung-to beliefs start to shift.

The tension and sense of looming dread are very eerie. It takes a long time to piece together what brought about their circumstances and understand why the old sisters are so childish in many ways. Without knowing what is happening outside their garden walls, the sense of impending change and uncertainty propels the book forward.

The characters are so interesting and complex. I really loved this book, and haven't read anything quite like it before. I recommend it to anyone looking for something different!

The Garden by Nick Newman was a really fascinating and mysterious read. Two elderly sisters live alone in an old house surrounded by a garden they must tend to. When a mysterious visitor arrives in the garden, more questions about their existence and the outside world arise. Reminiscent of Plato's cave, I really enjoyed this.

The Garden by Nick Newman is a melancholy story. It follows Evelyn and Lily, two elderly sisters who live alone inside a walled up estate. They spend each day tending the land and doing what they must to survive. Then one day they discover a boy has broken through the wall and has been hiding within their house. His presence makes the sisters question everything that they thought they knew. This book is slow paced, only allowing us glimpses of what might have created the world these characters exist in. It’s unique and unsettling. Lily is the creative one, living in a fantasy of her own imagination. Evelyn is the practical one, making sure that they can eat from the meager plants she grows, always planning for things to go wrong. I felt sad for these women. They live based on what their mother told them, giving their whole future to this property. Their parents made choices out of fear that left their kids living an unfulfilled life. These girls never questioned it. Then to find that they could have had more, could have known more, at the brink of the end- that’s heartbreaking to me. The longer that I sit with this story, the more it impacts me. It is thought-provoking, sad, and ultimately, provides a kind of hope. 4/5 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and Putnam Books for allowing me access to an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Publication date February 18th, 2025. This review will be found on Instagram, StoryGraph, and Goodreads indefinitely.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this book.

The book is spellbinding. I could not put it down. It should be on everybody's reading list!

Amazing. I enjoyed getting into Evelyn and Lily's heads. The sisters are so different in their wants and emotional needs.

You just have to read this one!

I don’t even know where to start with this book. It was such a huge mess with unbelievable characters and unbelievable situations. I am totally perplexed as to how it received so many glowing reviews. Apparently I am not a fan of this genre, although I’m not sure what genre it belongs to. It is supposed to be a dystopian fantasy, but lacked the world building it needed. It was unclear throughout when and where the story took place, why the garden was walled in, why the two elderly sisters lived only in the kitchen and believed they were alone in the world etc. I had to force myself to keep reading. There seemed to be no plot here, just a series of unbelievable, sometimes horrific scenes. I received an e-ARC from the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 1.5 stars rounded to 2.

Gray Gardens meets The Road. This is a sparse novel - 2 main characters who stay in the same place for the entirety of the story, yet there is heft and substance lurking just beneath the surface. The author does a brilliant job developing the story with the right balance of show versus tell. Great book club choice.

*Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a free copy of this ebook in exchange for an honest review*

« Thank you Penguin Group Putnam for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own. »
The “secret garden” novel is referred to as one of their cherished book. It’s an odd fantasy spin centered on a walled off and forgotten garden estate. Two elderly sisters were forced into isolation on their family estate after an apocalyptic event. Their parents’ outlook doomed them to survive off the food garden for decades. Their estate is their savior but the long standing isolation causes a stultifying contraction of their psychosocial selves. Some kind of “girl interrupted” phenomenon…. The beautiful writing slowly blends flashbacks via the elder sister’s childhood memories. Do people stay ‘sane’ without social interactions? For some reason, this story reminds me of North Woods by D. Mason. Two sisters raised to lean on each other on an apple orchard….

This is one of those dystopian books that kept me wondering what was going on! At 70% I was still trying to figure it out and it definitely kept me reading to find out. It follows two elderly who are quite the oddities themselves and trying to figure out their actions and reasons for doing things had me guessing. I would have loved to have seen a bigger glimpse into the world outside the walls but still a different type of post apocalyptic type of read I would recommend.

I’m gonna be completely honest here… I have no idea what the point of this book was. 🫣 Don’t get me wrong, the writing style was great and I was pretty hooked to the story for the most part. But I kept waiting for things to be explained or just become more clear but nothing was… like at all. And it wasn’t left like it could have a sequel. Unless there was a book for the same timeline as the boy and his journey. I would like that. I’m still giving it 3 stars because I was pretty hooked and wanted to keep reading to hopefully figure it all out.

I found myself intrigued by the story of these two sisters, Evelyn and Lily. But also questioning everything. Are they actually elderly sisters or are they overworked or is their diet (that we discover in the end) deteriorating them prematurely? Are they actually sisters? Their dynamic was questionable and I felt that they didn’t actually like each other very much. Then comes a boy when they thought nothing existed beyond their garden and the wall that surrounded it.

I wanted to learn more from the boy about what was outside of the wall. What happened in the world? Did something actually happen or was their mom just completely nuts? Who were these people that kept trying to break in and what was wrong with them?

And we literally got NO answers. At all. So yea… that’s very frustrating. I get if we have to infer some stuff ourselves in books but to literally get zero answers was annoying. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Disturbing but well written. I can't say I liked it but I did read it through. It was good and deserving of three stars. Thank you to NetGalley for the complementary digital ARC. This review is my own words and opinion.

In a post-apocalyptic world of unknown time or place, elderly sisters, Evelyn and Lily, live in isolation, never leaving their walled garden. And then the boy arrives and everything changes for the sisters. The book is sort of a dual-timeline because there are sections where Evelyn starts to remember parts of her childhood when her parents were alive with hints indicating their mother may have been mentally unstable. This book is strange, but it pulled me in from the first page. If you like reading books about dystopian type societies, The Garden is a must-read. Thanks to the author Nick Newman, Putnam (PENGUIN GROUP), and NetGalley. I received a complimentary copy of this ebook. The opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.

I enjoy trying new authors. The book wasn't anything like I expected it to be.
I guess I was expecting something along the lines of The Secret Garden but not even close.
I expected two charming elderly sisters living together as neither had married and they've never ventured outside of their garden walls. Instead, the sisters fight constantly. Taking place mostly in modern times, of what year it is we have no idea. We also have a lot of flip flopping back and forth from this modern time to whenever the mother was alive. The mother put a lot of restrictions on the sisters, they couldn't do many things and even in their elderly age she still has control over them with their thoughts. The sisters spend their days taking care of bee hives, farming, cleaning and raising chickens. These are elderly women who have no help and no contact with the outside world. No mention of anything modern like tv's or phones. All of the sudden a ragged boy shows up and totally disrupts their world, one sister likes him the other doesn't.
Part of the huge house is boarded up from the time the mother was living, and it still is. The mother had a huge influence on them and still does.
The whole book has a strange and unsettling vibe to it. I have many questions that were not answered in the book and I'm sure there won't be a sequel to answer them.

I was given a complimentary copy of the book.
All opinions expressed are my own.

I enjoyed this dystopian book, but do think it could have benefitted from a bit more...you know...dystopia. Not a lot is known about what happened or IS happening in this world, as everything is seen through the lens of two elderly sisters who are more focused on day to day survival than giving us a history lesson (but we do witness a seriously intense dust storm!)

The sisters are compelling--pragmatic worker bee, Evelyn and dreamy, fragile Lily. The main thrust of the story is that the women receive a visitor to their compound which reveals secrets to we the reader, as well as this new character. This person destroys the careful balance in the sister's relationship, but also forces them to confront that they've outlived their roles and need to make changes.

There are flashbacks in the story, but more about family dynamics and a floundering marriage between Evelyn and Lily's parents than about whatever happened to shut them off from society. (IS there a society anymore? We don't really know.) I wanted these flashbacks to give me some answers, but they posed more questions.

So ultimately I found this to be more a book about sisterhood and secrets, and how people deal with grief, rather than a traditional dystopian story. (This might be why some people who profess not to like dystopian tales enjoyed this one.) I also thought it wrapped up a little too abruptly (though I did enjoy the ending.)

Overall, this was a mixed bag for me, but I did enjoy the characters and the descriptive passages. I just wished it had leaned more into some of the more practical and serious elements of the plot (i.e. less about ballet shoes and more about where the meat came from). Thank you to the author and NetGalley for granting me the opportunity to read this in exchange for an honest review.

This was interesting. I wasn’t sure what to make of it in the beginning but I kept reading and enjoyed it. The ending felt a bit abrupt, but all in all a good book! I would’ve liked a little more depth in the ending so it didn’t feel so rushed but it wasn’t bad. A solid dystopian book!

The Garden by Nick Newman is a great novel. Very haunting and interesting atmosphere that the author has created.

First thanks to Netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.
I absolutely loved this book! I was engaged from the start and totally fell in love with the garden, the sisters and the boy. Newman is skilled at creating believable, distinct characters and dialogue, even in this strange dystopian world they live in. There are mysteries that are revealed as we read and we come to understand why they are in the garden and what shaped their personalities.

I took my time reading this one, relishing Newman's prose and the descriptions of the world he created, and I'm not usually one who loves descriptive details. So often the bog down the story and become parts I skip or skim over. Not this one. The garden becomes a character as well and just as important as the other unseen characters--the women's mother and father.

I look forward to reading another by this author!

Told between the present and recollections of the past, The Garden is a dystopian look into the dysfunctional lives of two elderly sisters that have lived unconventional and cloistered lives due to a global weather event.

I had a hard time getting into this one as Newman sometimes writes very short and abrupt sentences that didn’t lend, for me the at least, the feeling of being led into the storyline. Instead it kept abruptly stopping which frequently pulled me out of the story.

Another issue I had was that Evie’s recollections were printed in italics, meaning every time there was a flashback, there were pages of italicized text. Italics are difficult to read when it’s longer than a paragraph or two, and Newman didn’t even include paragraph breaks, so reading 8 pages of solid, unbroken italicized text was absolutely brutal on my eyes.

Despite those cons, when the novel eventually picked up I found myself emotionally invested…
This is not a feel good book. Not by any means. Despite the ending having a kind of HEA, it was tinted with a melancholy hue. It also really makes you think about how you would react in a similar situation, and what lengths you would go to in order to survive.

I received an ARC copy courtesy of Penguin Group Putnam/G.P. Putnam's Sons and NetGalley, however my review is completely my own unbiased personal opinion, left of my own volition.
4 Stars

I read this but found it confusing as until near the end could not figure out the time line when I realized it was in some future time when we had destroyed the earth. I liked the writing but the story not so much. I finished it only because I was hoping for some closure or time line clarity.