Is your heart broken beyond repair? Would you like to sleep through it? In The Poppy Fields by Nikki Erlick, we find a treatment center that offers just that. Sleep that heals your heart and helps you manage your grief but there is always a cost. This novel is an exploration of grief, friendship and adventure as we follow a group of strangers on their journey to the fields. I enjoyed this book, it was wonderful in the exploration of each character's thoughts and feelings through their grief journey. Each new destination brought for a new light or way of thinking in terms of how to heal, and how each person experience grief on their own. It was extremely thought provoking and made you wonder which choice you would want to make if given the opportunity. Nikki's writing was good and flowed extremely well. Her characters each had their own personalities and I felt drawn to them. Every scenery was better than the last and I loved all the road trip pit stops. I did feel that with such a long journey to their destination that the ending was a bit rushed and I didn't get the closure for the characters that I would have liked. With that said it was still a wonderful read that I would highly recommend. I wouldn't be surprised to see this a movie one day with the unique concept! Bravo Nikki! 4 Stars for me!
Thanks to NetGalley and HarporCollins Publishing for providing this ARC in exchange for my honest review.
To be published June 17, 2025

After loving The Measure, I was eager to read Nikki Erlick’s latest, The Poppy Fields absolutely delivered. Though there’s a science-fiction premise at its core, the book isn’t about the technology. It’s about the people. At its heart, this is a novel about grief, memory, and the bonds we form with strangers when life throws us together. The road trip structure was perfect for slowly peeling back the layers of the three main characters. I loved watching them open up, clash, connect, and grieve together.

Each character brought something different to the story, yet their guilt, longing, love, and vulnerability resonated in a deeply human way. Erlick captures that feeling of being lost and searching for meaning with incredible tenderness.

Thoughtful, moving, and beautifully written. A quiet but powerful book about what binds us.

I am embarrassed to say that I totally missed the nods to The Wizard of Oz when I read this. Someone should rescind my English Lit degree.

This is a road trip book. It kicks off with a tornado at the Kansas City airport. After flights are grounded, a motley group of strangers band together to share a car. They are each traveling to a place called The Poppy Fields in California for purposes unique to each of them. On the way, they get to know each other but, more importantly, they get to know themselves and discover that the answers they have been looking for might be closer to home than they think. Sound familiar?

This is Nikki Erlick’s sophomore novel after her wildly successful The Measure. This book was hobbled out of the gate by reader expectation, and I am guilty. The Measure gave us a unique plot that had readers engaging in conversation. This book will not do that. This is a quiet book. It is a story of friendship, self-discovery, and navigating loss told through a narrative gilded here and there with shades of Dorothy and her companion’s journey to Oz – complete with her little dog, too!

I liked this story well enough, but I wasn’t bowled over by it. There were excellent descriptions of the grief experience. So excellent in fact, that I was convinced Erlick must have undergone some deep grief trauma herself and this book was her therapy. The characters were interesting, if not inspired, but I was never totally invested in their journeys. For me, this was a classic summer read in that the story was pleasant, the characters were engaging, the narrative didn’t tax my brain, and the ending leaned towards happily ever after. I do suspect that I would have gotten more out of it had I been aware of the Wizard of Oz component prior to reading it.

The Poppy Fields is a touching story that combines fiction with deep human emotions. It takes place in a unique place where people can heal their broken hearts through sleep. The novel follows a group of strangers united by their grief and hope as they seek something almost mythical. Each character's story reveals their pain and strength, creating a powerful picture of loss and the struggle for peace. Although some parts of the story might seem unbelievable, the core message about the challenges and costs of healing feels very true.

This is a stunning, thought provoking exploration of grief, healing, and the emotional cost of forgetting. The concept is instantly compelling: in this world, grief can be “slept off” in a place called the poppy fields, a dreamlike landscape where mourners go to rest and, ideally, heal. But there’s a catch. Some people wake up having lost not just their pain, but their emotional connection to the person they’ve lost. The question the book quietly, but powerfully asks is; what is the price of peace, and is it worth it?

This would make an incredible book club pick. Every character feels vivid and distinct, with layered backstories and rich emotional arcs that invite conversation. Erlick handles heavy themes (grief, love, memory, and identity) with remarkable care, and there are some beautifully crafted twists that add depth without ever feeling manipulative.

While the story revolves around loss, it’s not a bleak book, it’s deeply human, and ultimately hopeful. It speaks to the universality of mourning and asks what it really means to move on. If you’ve ever struggled with grief, or simply want a novel that will move and challenge you, this one was fantastic.

After losing someone dear to you, it feels like a nice long nap would help. Even though I completely embraced the premise, the execution did not resonate. The relationships were too forced, as were the poppy fields. I wish I enjoyed this one more. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

The characters in this are excellent but I had hoped for more science fiction, something just a touch more removed from mundane day-to-day life than this barely-there speculative musing.

The vast majority of the book actually focuses on a cross-country road trip bonding an unlikely group of friends, and indeed the author's note calls this a tale of "love, loss, and road trips."

Revealing plot twists unfold without much ado. Even the reflective prose on grieving is a bit underwhelming. I can think of so many other books that pack an emotional punch with this topic. But while this narrative does touch on so much realistic understanding of grief, there is something missing in the emotional undercurrents.

If you're after a gentle, lightly reflective found family, have at it. Just don't ask too much of the speculative backdrop.

I absolutely loved The Measure, so I was really excited to dive into Nikki Erlick’s next novel. While Poppy Fields had some sweet moments and clever nods to The Wizard of Oz, it didn’t quite capture me the same way.

The story had a few surprises I enjoyed, and the cast of characters was cute, but I didn’t find myself getting very attached to them. It was an okay read—pleasant enough—but lacked the emotional pull and depth that made The Measure so memorable for me.

Overall, not a bad book by any means, but it didn’t leave a lasting impression.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy.

ARC Review – Release Date: June 17, 2025

“Maybe healing isn’t forgetting. Maybe it’s remembering without breaking.”

This is my first book written by Nikki Erlick, but will definitely not be my last. The Poppy Fields is a tender, quietly powerful novel about four strangers—and one dog—traveling across the country toward a mysterious desert facility that offers people a controversial escape from grief: one month of deep, dreamless sleep, and who could not use a little more sleep from time to time?

What begins as a slow-burning road trip blossoms into a layered exploration of memory, loss, and connection. The characters in the book, Ava, Ray, Sasha, and Sky, each bring their own heartbreaks to the journey, but it’s in their shared silence and stories that the real healing begins.

This book made me pause and reflect more than once. It made me ponder my own healing journey and the way I’ve processed grief in the past. It’s emotional without being heavy-handed, speculative without losing its heart, and have made me put her previous book, The Measure on my immediate TBR. This is a book that will sit with me for a while to come.
This book was:
✨ Thought-provoking
✨ Beautifully written
✨ Full of emotional depth

Thank you Netgalley and HarperCollins for this eArc!

All I can way is wow. Going into this book after skimming the synopsis, I assumed we would get the perspective of what happens while these people are sleeping. Are there crazy dreams or something? This was not the case. This was so much more.

We joined Ava, Ray, Sasha, and Sky on the trek across country to get to a treatment center called The Poppy Fields in the desert of California founded by Ellis Jones. Fate brought the strangers together and we learn about their grief/life experience along the way.

Grief is always such a relatable topic in books because more often than not, we have all experienced some sort of loss in life. Nikki Erlick’s descriptive way of the experience and how it can look so different between people was amazing.

“Stop stumbling and sleepwalking through the present…waiting for a shiny future. Let the future start right now.”

Regarding Poppies “If something so spectacular can still blossom in even the most disturbed earth, then doesn’t that mean there’s hope for even the most battered hearts to heal?”

I 1,000% recommend this book!

Book Review: The Poppy fields by Nikki Erlick

I was looking forward to reading this book after reading and loving The Measure by the same author. Depression often makes people want to sleep, so it makes sense that the author would use sleep as a treatment in her story. For those of you who have gone through debilitating grief, if you had the opportunity to sleep for 1-2 months and wake up past the most difficult period of time and be able to remember the person you lost without that pain, would you? What if there was a 25% chance you would wake up no longer feeling the love and attachment towards that person? Does it erase the importance of that person in your life? How would it affect the ones sharing in the grief (ex. Your sister who also lost their mother or your husband who also lost a child). Is it fair to say it should be a personal decision if it also affects people around you. These are all ethical questions that the author has so beautiful presented.

The characters in this novel are new to each other, but embark on a journey together to the poppy fields for different reasons. They are all going through grief and guilt.

This is a story of the power of friendship and how connecting with those who have experienced similar difficulties can help us to get through difficult times. Grief is an individual journey, each person needing their own way to grieve and time to heal. It’s also a reminder to treat the people we love with the understanding that life is short and unpredictable.

I loved this author’s ability to create a story that provokes thought and relatable, well developed characters. She wraps up the story with an ending that made me feel satisfied. I also loved how she injected interviews, newspaper articles, and case stories throughout the novel, giving a good understanding of the pros and cons of the treatment.

This was a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ book for me.

Thank you to #Netgalley #ThePoppyFieldsDeluxeLimitedEdition for the ARC of this book

This was one of my most anticipated reads of the year! I LOVED The Measure. So the good news is that I did enjoy this story.. It's similar in that there are multiple perspectives. I read this quickly within 2 days. I liked her writing, and I liked her insights on grief. I just didn't connect with the characters very much, so I did knock off a star. Did I like it as much as The Measure? No, but it was good. Will I wait anxiously for her next read? Yes!

Out in the California desert is where you’ll find the Poppy Fields, a revolutionary treatment center that helps patients find closure for debilitating grief. Patients embark on a prolonged period of medically induced sleep (one to two months), and when they wake, their pain of their grief has been healed. But the treatment does come with the risk of side effects….

Three strangers and one little dog, all on their way to the Poppy Fields for their own reasons, are thrown together at a Kansas airport after a tornado warning cancels their flight. Ava, Ray, Sasha, and PJ the dog decide to rent a car and set off on a cross-country road trip together. Along the way, they meet a fourth traveling companion and as their journey unfolds, they share confidences, learning a little more about each other and ultimately themselves too.

Just like in her incredible book The Measure, Nikki Erlick takes a speculative fiction concept that almost feels possible and thoughtfully examines it from all angles through the lens of intricately intertwined character arcs. The result is a story that’s profoundly emotional, resonating with themes of loss, grief, healing, self-discovery, and found family. This is a book that practically begs to be read by a book club or buddy read – I can just imagine the meaningful conversation it would inspire!

I would be remiss as a Wizard of Oz fan if I didn’t mention the parallels between this book and the iconic classic. They’re subtle, but if you know to look for them, they’re there, and I absolutely loved that. Not just in the motifs of the four travelers, Kansas, tornado, and sleep-inducing poppy fields, but also in some similar character arcs and themes. It would make a pretty incredible high school English assignment to have students compare the two stories!

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for providing me an advance copy of this book.

💤 What if you could sleep through heartbreak? In The Poppy Fields, Nikki Erlick (author of The Measure) returns with another stunning speculative concept.
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This time, a controversial treatment center in the California desert that offers the grief-stricken a chance to rest their way to healing… for a price.
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Ava, Ray, Sasha, and Sky are strangers drawn together by loss, regret, and hope. As they make their way to the Fields, their secrets surface, and with them, questions about love, pain, and whether grief is something we should want to erase.
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This book made me think and feel in the best way. The found family. The moral dilemmas. The way Erlick intertwines science, ethics, and deeply human emotion. I found myself pausing to underline lines like: “Grief was love in its second shape.”
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It’s thought-provoking, heartfelt, and a little bit haunting. The ending didn’t totally blow me away, but this story still landed exactly where it needed to- with hope. Highly recommend this one, especially on audio (full cast = chef’s kiss).
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Out June 17—add it to your TBR and get ready to feel everything. 💔✨🌺 Thank you @netgalley @williammorrowbooks @harperaudio @nikkierlick for the advance copy in exchange for my review. All thoughts are my own. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️+
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❔Would you ever consider being a patient at the poppy fields ?!
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#ThePoppyFields #NikkiErlick #SpeculativeFiction #BookReview #GriefAndHealing #BookstagramRecs #EmotionalReads #FoundFamily #JuneBookRelease #ContemporaryFiction #BookLover #BookAesthetic #BooksThatMakeYouThink #AudiobookRecs #TBRTuesday #NetGalleyReview #WilliamMorrowBooks #BookishThoughts #SleepawayGrief #BooksThatStayWithYou #GriefIsLove #BookQuoteMagic #FictionThatHeals #EmotionalReadsOnly #NewRelease2025

Another amazing book by Nikki Erlick!! Similar to The Measure, The Poppy Fields makes for great discussion! Nikki is a master at creating an interwoven web of characters. This follows a few characters making their way, via road trip, to The Poppy Fields - a grief treatment center where you can sleep to treat your grief. This book is about grief, love, how those things as so closely intertwined. This book is going to live in my head rent free for awhile. Highly recommend!

This story follows a group of four strangers who have all been affected by the Poppy Fields in some way and end up traveling there together to find answers.

What an amazingly powerful book about the various ways people handle grief. The concept was so unique and the way that Erlick speaks about love and loss is truthful and painful in all the right ways.

I loved the variety of perspectives, the way all the stories wove together, and even though I had some idea of the ways these strangers might be interconnected, my jaw still dropped with every revelation.

I also loved how each character grew organically and realistically throughout their journey and how they all impacted each other. I don’t want to give too much away, but I really felt for all of these characters and connected with them all in some way.

Erlick’s sophomore novel was one worth waiting for - a book that forces you to look inward, think carefully, and truly feel, the way only the best books do!

Thank you William Morrow Books, NetGalley, Librofm , and Nikki Erlick for the ARC/ALC!

Nikki Erlick is a Master of the Speculative Fiction Premise...

"The Poppy Fields" has an original and creative premise with an out-of-the-box dynamic that encompasses what-if situations, allowing readers to ponder grief. It is intense in all the right places and offers life and substance to the struggles of loss...

With that said, several aspects of this story fell short for me..

An emotional connection with the main characters, which I look forward to in every book, didn't happen until well into the story. The one character I fully connected with was a secondary character who surfaced near the end of the book. She was full of life and memories to share, and worthy of a story of her own.

The main characters' backstories unfolded too slowly, causing the story to drag, feel repetitive, and lengthy. At times, it felt as though reaching the Poppy Fields had become secondary, and the story had lost its focus.

This was an immersion read; the audiobook features a multicasting narration with Marin Ireland as the primary narrator. Her voicing and recounting of the story were seamless and uplifting.

"The Poppy Fields" has a unique premise that drew me in. It's a story I liked, but I didn't love it, and I was expecting a better execution overall. I'm glad Nikki Erlick has a strong following, and many positive reviews and high ratings for this book. I look forward to more of her work in the future!

3.25⭐

Thank you to William Morrow, HarperAudio, and Nikki Erlick for the gifted DRC and ALC through NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.

4.5 ⭐️
As a huge fan of Nikki Erlick's The Measure, I was so excited to get approved for the early copy of this!! She is definitely an auto-buy author for me now!
This speculative fiction brings us into a world where science has found an answer to help people with grief and loss, but it may come with risks.
We follow a cast of different characters who intertwine in this world. This is a very character driven story that explores their different backgrounds, motivations, and ways of dealing with grief. As someone who has dealt with heavy loss, I was very connected to these characters and spent a lot time considering my own feelings and what choices would I make for myself.
The pacing felt just right as we learned more and more about the characters.
I really loved this book!
Thank you William Morrow and NetGalley for this e-Arc!
This book publishes June 17, 2025.

Everyone grieves differently, but at The Poppy Fields, it looks quite the same. The Poppy Fields tells the story of three people who come together on a roadtrip to a grief treatment center in California after a tornado derails their flight plans. Throughout the story, we learn that Ava, Ray, and Sasha all have different motivations for going to The Poppy Fields - some at an attempt to heal, and other seeking answers and the truth about the facility. I enjoyed The Poppy Fields and would recommend for fans of slow burners and speculative fiction and I would be interested in reading other novels by this author in the future. Thank you to Netgalley, Harper Collins, and the author for the opportunity to receive an arc in exchange for an honest review.

I read the advance reader copy of The Poppy Fields by Nikki Erlick and I really enjoyed this read. We have multiple POVs in this story. The Poppy Fields is a unique concept for grieving. If you have suffered a significant loss, you can apply to The Poppy Fields to sleep for 30-60 days to help you overcome the grief, the risk is that in approximately 25% of 'sleepers' they lose the attachment to the person they are grieving. In other words, they do not remember the love, the feelings. The option to sleep your way to a cure when you are deep in the journey with grief is so tempting. I can't imagine anyone feeling worse than I felt in my loss, and I wanted to feel bad, but I would not risk forgetting the love no matter how much the grief hurt.

Ellis is the genius behind the Poppy Fields. She lost her parents as a five year old, and she and her younger sister were raised by their grandmother. We also have four protagonists who band together after their flight is cancelled and they share a rental car from Kansas to drive to California. We have Ray, a fireman who is looking for answers about his younger brother, Johnny, Ava, an artist who is looking for her sister, Sasha, an almost bride who wants to understand why she was rejected from The Poppy Fields, and Sky a free spirit who joins them on the ride, but is not looking to sleep. There is also the adorably PJ, the dog, the team's mascot. There is peace, love, understanding and found family.

As someone who has grappled with grief I enjoyed this read. Everyone wants answers, and wants to know how to get through this terrible pain, but mostly, they just want the person they lost, back. And, that can never happen. But, if you open yourself up to living again, new people will enter your life.

I enjoyed this ARC and I need to thank Net Galley and William Morrow for my advance reader copy. This book releases on June 17, 2025.