I came to The Someday Garden expecting a swoony romance with a side of magical realism. What I didn’t expect was to have my heart broken wide open by a friendship.

The setup is this: two best friends, Sophie and Harriet, stand at a crossroads — college finished, futures pulling them to opposite coasts. Before life carries them in different directions, they take one last road trip together to Lilymoor House, a lush and possibly magical garden estate on the coast of Maine that bonded them years ago over a documentary. They make a promise there, the way young people do when the future feels both endless and terrifying: meet back here in ten years, no matter what.

Neither of them knows what the next chapters hold.

What unfolds is part love story, part grief memoir, part enchantment. Sophie ends up as Lilymoor’s new head gardener for the summer, a deeply ironic turn given the upcoming ten-year promise and Harriet’s absence. The grounds seem to resist her care, impossibly wet wildflower gardens, mysterious vines with no discoverable sources, and — in the way of all great magical realism — a blue door that is never in the same place twice. Behind it: an unfinished secret garden, and a thoroughly frustrated man who is somehow trapped inside it.

(I will admit I briefly had eyes for Oliver, the enigmatic owner’s inconveniently attractive nephew, also there for the summer. But that passed quickly. The book knew what it was doing.)

But here’s what stayed with me long after the last page: the romance is wonderful, full of butterflies and longing and the nearly impossible sense of “Oh, there you are,” but it’s Sophie and Harriet’s friendship that makes this book something special. The way Poston portrays those deep, specific bonds — the shared joys, the shorthand, the quirks only the other person truly understands — is achingly real. And the grief Sophie carries, the layered, deepening weight of it, unfolds slowly and beautifully, the way real grief does. I wasn’t prepared for how much it would move me.

One small detail I completely fell for: Harriet’s collection of untranslatable words. Words from other languages that capture something English can’t quite hold. I’ve kept lists like that myself from time to time (a habit Devious Lies by Parker S. Huntington first nudged me toward), and seeing it woven so naturally into these characters made me want to start again.

The healing that Lilymoor offers isn’t just Sophie’s to receive — it ripples outward, making room for Oliver and Cyrus’s friendship too, gently tending all the relationships that have grown a little wild and overgrown. Somehow, the garden knows what everyone needs, even when they don’t.

I first read Ashley Poston in A Novel Love Story, and I have yet to find a story of hers that I haven’t fallen in love with. The Seven Year Slip, The Dead Romantics, and now The Someday Garden — she just keeps getting better. (Sounds Like Love is still on my TBR. I know, I know.)

If you love magical realism, lush descriptions, and the particular ache of friendships that span years and distance — this one is for you. The Someday Garden bloomed in all the right places.