The Poppy Fields by Nikki Erlick is a fascinating deep dive into how we grieve. I’m so grateful to HarperAudio (@harpercollins) for an ALC.

A a brilliant and single-minded scientist named Ellis has developed a new treatment for grief. Patients come to her center, The Poppy Fields, to sleep for weeks or even months, and while they sleep, Ellis’s program works to take the edge off the pain they feel from losing a loved one or having a relationship fall apart. Not everyone is right for the treatment, and you must be willing to risk the shadowy side effects that 25% of patients report. But the other 75% percent leave The Poppy Fields happier. When three strangers on their way to the center for different reasons meet in an airport after a tornado cancels all flights, they decide to share a rent a car and make their way cross country together.

This was such an interesting book. It’s my first by the author, but I’ll definitely be reading more. The story is told in multiple POVs interspersed with interviews with prospective patients and other media about The Poppy Fields. I would have expected a book where almost all the characters are struggling with such heavy grief to be harder to read—and I imagine if you are in the process of newly grieving someone this one could be quite triggering—but I found it to be a really hopeful, uplifting book. I really appreciated all the perspectives presented and the way the story tied together. It was also lovely to see the road trippers supporting each other. The book raises interesting questions about why we don’t have more resources for people when grief is something we will all face.

The audiobook has multiple narrators, but Marin Ireland—one of my favorites—is the main voice, and she does an amazing job. She’s one of those narrators I could listen to all day. She brings such empathy and humanity to her characters. The interviews and articles about The Poppy Fields are done by other voice actors and that made for a very immersive listening experience.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you Harper Audio for the advanced audio copy.

I went into The Poppy Fields mostly blind — I read and loved Erick’s debut novel, The Measure, but I didn’t even read the synopsis of this novel. It didn’t matter what it was going to be about. I NEEDED to read it! The multiple narrators made listening to the audio a superior experience.

That being said, I knew to expect speculative concepts, but I was not prepared for what The Poppy Fields actually were — an experimental and controversial treatment center that allows those suffering from the heartache of loss to sleep through their pain.

The journey to The Poppy Fields (not the path of grief and healing but the physical journey across the U.S. — Missouri, Massachusetts, California, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Kansas and Arizona) really gave the map on my BUJO travel page a lot of color. I only wish the novel had spent a little more time at th fields once they got there.

Side note: It is set during the month of May, so it was fun to read the book during the same month in which it took place.

Throughout the novel, I kept asking myself if I would choose to go to sleep through my pain, consequences be damned. And at one point in my life, I would have said yes, absolutely. Now that I’m past that grief on my own, I say absolutely not. Grief is a unique journey and it’s never linear. But the question is … how far would you go to escape grief — the soul crushing kind that changes a person?

3.5 rounded to 4

Maybe because Marin Ireland was a narrator, but The Poppy Fields was a Frederik Backman experience for me. (This a a compliment!) The Poppy Fields immersed me in a world similar to this one, but with the possibility of sleeping away the pain of grief. The novel follows travelers seeking a sleep at the Poppy Fields, as well as the inner workings of the running of the institution.

Each character was someone I wanted to hug, different reasons for each person. They were all in pain. Over the course of the novel, we learned more and more about each character and their backstory. Everyone had grief in common.

But that’s not to say the book was serious and droll. There were funny moments too. Each of the narrators brought a different piece of the story to life and their overall performance was impressively fantastic. I had to start over several times because the beginning just wasn’t grabbing me but I think that was more of a me issue than an issue with this audiobook. Overall, it was worth a listen.

This was a beautiful journey into the many different ways grief is looked at and experienced and the importance of healing in our own ways. I think anyone who has lost someone close to them will feel this book a bit more deeply. I saw myself reflected back on these pages, and while it was a deeply emotional and beautiful story to read, it also made me feel seen and not alone in the grief and struggle grieving I’ve felt in my own life.

You follow the stories of five people (and a couple others thrown in along the way) who are dealing with the aftermath of losing someone, and their individual journeys to find a way to heal and move forward. This story made me laugh and cry and feel camaraderie , and then cry some more; but ultimately left me with a sense of connection and happiness. This truly was a beautiful and impactful story that I’m so glad I read.

If you get the chance, I highly recommend listening to the audio version of this book. I listened to this book as an advanced audio copy. The narrators did such an amazing job, it made for an even deeper more immersive experience that truly brought the book to life.

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for the audiobook ARC in exchange for my honest review!

When I realized Nikki Erlick, author of The Measure, was coming out with a new book, I immediately contacted William Morrow! Thank you for the gifted arc and stunning finished copy!! 😍 I am beyond obsessed with the sprayed edges and endpapers! This story is exactly what I was hoping for after reading Nikki’s debut, she does speculative fiction like nobody else! Another book that is so out the norm, thought provoking, beautifully written, and pulls at the heart strings! I think it would make a great book club pick, which I will be pushing for! It would force some great conversations! This book is a deep dive into grief and how people handle it differently, the varying depths of grief and coping mechanisms. I really enjoyed the main characters and their stories of why they were journeying to the poppy fields. This is one not to be missed! Highly recommend audio with the full cast! It is done so well!

The premise is quite intriguing: you can sleep away your grief and wake up renewed & recovered.

The Poppy Fields is not as intense or thought provoking as The Measure. Instead it focused more Ray, Sasha and Ava’s journey towards the sleep facility led and administered by Ellis. The story revolves more on the former 3’s journey, their reasons for wanting to go, what they’re grieving about and how they’re doing it, rather than the actual experiment and grief.

The characters are well drawn out. Their voices distinct from the others, each experience familiar, each grief accessible. And for such a heavy topic, it didn’t feel heavy on the heart, this exploration of how individuals handle loss. It’s close but far enough where it won’t emotionally wreck you. The ending is a little lukewarm, I wanted more from Ellis and the rest of the characters. Perhaps an X years later epilogue would’ve been great.


LOVE the narrator. She truly brought this story to life, her emphatic narration of the story made the story 100% better.

This was such a good listen. I enjoyed the pace, writing, and how the story unfolded. I found the characters compelling and enjoyed the different sides of their story. There is a level of fascination that comes with the idea of "what if..." and then considering how humanity would react. I feel the story did well in considering such a concept as the poppy fields and looking at it from different perspectives (personal, social, scientific, corporate, etc.). Phenomenal job by the narrators! I'll need to re-listen or get a physical copy. I feel I missed out on capturing some good quotes.

Would you trade your memories of someone you loved to ease the pain of losing them?
Thank you, William Morrow, for the gifted copy of The Poppy Fields {partner}
 
Genre: Science Fiction
Format: 🎧📖
Pub Date:   6.17.2025
Pages: 324
Star Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

“Here’s the thing, they haven’t lost that love. They’ve lost the physical, the visible, the tangible layer of love. But not the love itself. The love itself endures. The love itself is baked into our memories. The love itself is what slips across our cheeks when we cry; it’s what tugs at our lips when we smile. It’s the yearning pit in our stomach, the urge to make them proud. It’s the gratitude in knowing we were gifted something real. “

The Poppy Fields by Nikki Erlick packed such a quiet, powerful punch. It began slowly, giving me time to sink into the characters — their fears, memories, and quiet heartbreaks. By the end, I felt like I truly knew them.

With this book, Erlick asks if you could go into a deep sleep and wake up healed from grief. Would you do it? Even if it meant losing your memories of that person — their love, your pain, everything?

For me, as heavy as grief is, it’s proof that they were real. That love was real. That I got to experience something worth missing. The ache never entirely fades… but how lucky I am to have had something worth grieving.

And that’s what made this book unforgettable for me. It’s a quiet exploration of grief, memory, healing, and what it means to carry love through pain. Erlick handles it all with such tenderness and depth — I couldn’t help but feel moved.

Audiobook Review: ☆☆☆☆☆
The Poppy Fields is a full-cast audio narration. Each narrator added so much emotion and nuance — it made the story feel deeply immersive and personal.

Read if you enjoy:
❤️‍🩹 Self-reflection
🥹 Emotional stories
🗣️ Multiple POV

If you haven’t already, I highly recommend reading The Measure and The Poppy Fields. They both make incredible book club picks!

My thanks to NetGalley and Harper Audio for an advance copy of this audio book to review. Much as I hate to ‘et al.’ the talented cast of narrators, there are nine in the line after veteran Marin Ireland, making it impossible to distinguish which of the many characters they’re voicing, or even which of the main five.

Excepting sisters Ellis and Ava, who are actually estranged as the story begins, the plot revolves around four people and one adorable dog, PJ, who meet by chance when their flights are cancelled and they rent the very last available car to travel to on California. Ava is one of them, a reclusive children’s book artist; PJ is her life now that her grandmother has passed. She’s heading to her sister Ellis’s project, known as the Poppy Fields. Ray is a hard-nosed firefighter who desperately misses his brother Bobby, also a firefighter. Korean-American occupational therapist Sasha lost her fiancé to a random accident on the eve of her wedding, for which she blames herself. Soon joining them is teenage Sky, a hippie-throwback type, happy-go-lucky, serendipitous, with a knack for drifting in and out of their trip to the fields.

This novel’s strength lies in its character development. The multiple viewpoints and alternating structures—one chapter in the traditional first person, another presented in Q and A form as an interview, another still as an FAQ list—allow the five principals to explain the backstories that are critical to their decisions to make the trip. What comes through, even in the case of Ellis, the project’s originator, is that they made/are making a choice between living with grief and sleeping through the worst of it. That’s exactly what the project is: a medically assisted, expert-monitored, proven safe month-long nap. Poppies are symbols of remembrance, at least since the Great War. But there are no poppies or even fields involved: here they refer to the clients in identical red pyjamas in their beds at the lab. I thought the author might have mentioned the passing irony. The poppies here signify forgetting.

For most willing and eager applicants, who go through strict screening procedures before being selected for the free service, it’s only temporary forgetting. About 25 percent will wake up with The Side Effect: their recollection of the very people whose mourning sent them to the lab will be vague and indifferent. They are made aware of this before signing up. But the dilemma here is whether getting through the very human pain of grief is worth the price of forgetting the love that led to it?

It’s not a question easily answered, and the characters, not just the main ones but also the many whose stories leak into them, all struggle with it.

In some ways, the multiple characters and multiple perspectives that keep you reading also drag out the story and run it into circles. It becomes dizzying about half way through—the characters are different, grief is an individual experience, but ultimately they have all lost a loved one or even a fundamental part of themselves. So there’s a lot of sameness about their stories. What started out as a thriller, sci-fi-fi fantasy concept loses the pace very quickly. The story of Ava and Ellis bogs down in the little sister’s immature expectations and the big sister’s single-minded emotional distance. Sasha’s story is sad but her continued guilt over a death in which she was in no way implicated wears thin. When it was finally revealed what happened to her fiancé, I couldn’t believe an intelligent woman could think in such an unreasoning manner. Ray’s story spoke to me the most. He and his brother were genuinely close, and there’s an interesting twist in his motivation. I’m not sure why Sky is even in the story—to lighten it up occasionally, with her sunny (often silky) ways? I loved the puppy though, as did all the characters.

In sum, the story is imaginative and it deals with important life issues. But sometimes it reads too self-consciously as though readers need that constantly pointed out to them.

I really don’t even know how to adequately describe my feelings for this book.

“Memories without feelings are mere facts, cold and lifeless. It’s not enough just to say the names of our lost. The names must have power, must grab hold of our hearts, must remind us and teach us and inspire us.”

I loved this book so much. I loved the audio so much. The premise, the characters, the way the story made me feel and think, all just….so. Good.

This story explores grief on such a relatable level that I feel everyone needs to read it. If you can, I highly recommend the audio as its a full cast with mainly Marin Ireland at the helm and you won’t be disappointed.

This will definitely be a book people are talking about all summer long!

Thank you so very much to @williammorrowbooks for the arc and also stunning finished copy! I will treasure it
Thank you @harperaudio for the early listening copy. I devoured it.
Thank you @nikkierlick for this amazing story. It will live rent free in my head for some time to come

This one is out Tuesday 6/17 and you need to ADD TO CART IMMEDIATELY!

5 stars

I wasn’t head over heels for The Measure like many readers were, but I appreciated its premise enough to be intrigued by Erlick’s follow-up. The Poppy Fields also centers on a compelling “what if” – in this case, a retreat where people deep in grief can choose to sleep for weeks and wake up with their sorrow lessened.

I listened to this one on audio, and it was really well done. The full cast narration was engaging (and included my all-time favorite narrator, Marin Ireland) and brought the book to life. And while the concept itself had potential, but ultimately, the novel didn’t quite land for me. Despite the heavy themes of grief and healing, I found myself surprisingly untouched emotionally. I kept waiting for a moment that would really move me, but it never arrived.

It’s not that the book lacked interesting ideas – it just didn’t explore them with the depth I was hoping for. The characters felt more like vehicles for the concept rather than fully realized people, and as a result, their pain didn’t quite translate off the page. For a story about profound loss, I wanted to feel more than I did.

#thankyounetgalley

I just finished The Poppy Fields, and I’m still caught up in its world—that’s how powerful and creative this book is. Right from the start, the lush scenery of the poppy fields sprang to life in my mind, thanks to the author’s vivid, immersive descriptions. It’s the kind of setting that’s easy to picture and hard to forget.

The characters were wonderfully engaging, each with their own unique voices and journeys. I found myself genuinely caring about their struggles and triumphs. The story itself kept me guessing, and just when I thought I had it figured out, a surprise twist turned everything on its head—brilliantly done and completely unexpected.

If you loved The Measure, you’ll absolutely want to read The Poppy Fields. I’d love to see this story as a movie—the visuals would be stunning, and the emotional core would shine even brighter on screen. This book is imaginative, heartfelt, and truly memorable.

I really liked The Measure, so I was excited to receive this ARC. What I liked about The Measure was it made you think. Would you open your box and look at your string?

This book was no different. It made you think. How do you deal with grief? By going to sleep for an extended period of time? Or by simply living? What if sleeping ran the risk of you losing all emotions towards a person?

Another great story full of characters whose stories were woven together in subtle ways, even if they never interacted in the story.

Nice choice of narrators on this one.

Nikki Erlick has quickly become a must-read author. I’d recommend this to others.

I received this book free of charge from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

After absolutely loving The Measure, I’ve been eagerly awaiting Nikki Erlick’s next novel, and while The Poppy Fields didn’t quite resonate as deeply, it’s still a compelling, thought-provoking story. With multiple POVs and a unique speculative premise, what if you could sleep through your grief? This one’s perfect for book clubs. The audiobook, with its full cast narration, brings each character’s journey to life and adds emotional depth to their stories. Thanks to William Morrow for the ARC. Out June 17!

Four strangers (and one very good dog!) are all headed to The Poppy Fields, a mysterious, experimental grief therapy center in the California desert. When a tornado cancels their flight (luv the Wizard of Oz vibes), they decide to road trip there together, and slowly realize they’re not so different after all.

This one’s emotional in the best way. It’s about grief, healing, connection, and all the messy stuff in between. While it didn’t hit quite as hard as The Measure for me, Nikki Erlick’s writing is still sooo thoughtful and moving. If you like speculative fiction and literary reads with lots of heart, definitely check this one out.

The Poppy Fields is a therapeutic treatment center in the California desert that explores the concept of whether sleeping for a month is an effective cure for people trying to heal from grief or loss of a relationship or other important facet of their lives. After patients awaken, they will finally be healed… but only if they’re okay with the potential (1 in 4) side effect of feeling nothing.

This story centers around four unlikely companions and a little dog, PJ. After their flight was cancelled, they team up to drive from Kansas to the Poppy Fields, along the way learning that they have the same destination but all have different, slightly mysterious motives for heading there.

📝If you want a speculative novel that explores grief, heartache, human resilience, and the experiences that connect us all, while making you think, feel, wonder, and question lots of things, then this is the book for you! I really enjoyed the exploration of how different people handle grief and how they think other people should handle their grief. I did not find myself as compelled by the characters on their way to the Poppy Fields as by the creator of the center + the story of the fields themselves, but I still really enjoyed this read! The narrators did a great job of helping delineate between separate storylines and perspectives which absolutely improved the ease of reading this book versus if I had read it on paper, since the book itself does not really specify the setting or which person’s perspective for each chapter.

Thank you to Netgalley and Harper Audio for the opportunity to listen to this ALC in exchange for an honest review!

I went into The Poppy Fields with an open mind and an open heart and I’m so glad I did. This is my first bout of speculative fiction and I am not disappointed. I loved the entire premise of the story. I absolutely do understand why people would want to go to The Poppy Fields. This book really made me wonder if I would risk any portion of the memories or feelings to get to the other side of grief. I love how the characters friendship evolved and grew. I loved the many different perspectives, and thought this was such a thought provoking read. The Poppy Fields is a wonderful book about love and loss and the path from grieving to healing. I look forward to reading Nikki Erlick’s other books. I listened to the audiobook and the narrator did a great job.

I would like to thank HarperAudio Adult and NetGalley for giving me an ARC (which did not sway my opinions or review).

This was the most unique book I’ve heard in a while. I vacillated between loving it and being indifferent with it. The story deals primarily with coping with grief and secondly love. The characters were mediocre. I deducted one star for profanity, especially taking the Lord’s name in vain. I am glad I read this.

I was blessed with an audio ARC. The opinions expressed are my own and unbiased.

This is my first time reading Nikki Erlick. I'm a sucker for speculative fiction, and was not disappointed! This book was definitely mind opening and had me doing a lot of inward thinking. I also enjoyed the multiple POVs and formats - different characters, interviews, podcasts, and the like. The different narrators did a great job separating the different POVs but also keeping the story cohesive.

The Poppy Fields is a poignant novel exploring grief and loss and healing. Four strangers, all who have experienced some type of loss, band together to travel to the Poppy Fields, an experimental sleep treatment to heal heartache. Along the way they find love in their new found family, and find self-discovery through their journey and how they have handled their loss and how far they would go to heal.


Thank you HarperAudio and NetGalley for the ARC audiobook in exchange for an honest review!

Thank you to Netgalley for this early audio copy!

The Poppy Fields is a facility where people dealing with loss can go “sleep away their grief”. We follow Sasha, Ray, and Ava on their way to The Poppy Fields for various reasons. This was a lot different than I was expecting and I really loved it! I enjoyed the multiple POVs and I was able to keep track of who was who, the pacing was great and I didn’t want to stop listening! Highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys speculative fiction.