This book will without a doubt be one of my favourites of the year. Piranesi meets I Who Have Never Known Men, Nick Newman has crafted something truly fantastic - a sinister and claustrophobic tale that subtly sneaks its tendrils into you. Definitely one I’ll be recommending far and wide, the tension that slowly grows between all three characters is masterfully done.

Times have changed – I doubt that children nowadays would comply with a parent’s injunctions to the extent that these two elderly sisters have done for so many years. Amazing what a combination of love, obedience and fear will achieve. Dystopian, with a hefty ladleful of horror thrown in, this novel reminded me of Lockdown! The decrees to Stay Home, Do Not Fraternise, are redolent of how the sisters live, walled-in and warned-off, never leaving the kitchen to enjoy their home, never to go beyond the garden, never to let anyone in. But a boy does get in.
Hints of why they are so confined are subtly woven into the storyline – which was a bit slow at times – but you know what will be found when an apocalyptic storm and invaders compel the ladies to seek sanctuary elsewhere in the sealed-off stately home.
The resolution is an elegant portrayal of escape, freedom, compassion, gratitude: how fitting that the boy becomes a guardian.
The writing has undercurrents of tension throughout, with acute characterisations and dialogue. Nick Newman's evocative images of the garden, the bees, the lack of knowledge of the world beyond, activities trapped in decades past, are conveyed oh-so-well.

This is a slightly odd literary novel, which I enjoyed, for the most, a great deal. It had a slightly suffocating, claustrophobic feel to it, set within the confines of a walled garden home, where the two elderly sisters, Evelyn and Lily have tended their vegetable and flower garden in this strange post-apocalyptic world. Their days’ jobs tending to the land are ruled via their dead mother’s Almanac, and the ghosts of the past feel forever present. It is both Gothic in feel, and dystopian-esque (which is usually a genre I avoid), but I was enticed by the blurb’s description of the eccentric sisters and fancied something a bit different - and I’m glad I was.

It’s a beautiful piece of literary fiction, with the core of the novel being very much about Lily and Evelyn’s dysfunctional, but endearing relationship. Their solitary world is suddenly rocked when a young boy is suddenly found to have breached the walls, and brings with him all their fears of life beyond their comforting seclusion.

I don’t want to add any spoilers, only that for me it was very much a page turner with a very unsatisfactory ending. It felt almost like someone else had written the last few chapters. It sadly takes it down from a 4 star, to a 3.5 overall, but I would still recommend it to people with this caveat.

Nevertheless, thank you to Random House and NetGalley and for providing an ARC

4.5 rounded down

This quiet dystopia alternates between the present, where elderly sisters Evelyn and Lily live in complete isolation from the rest of the world, and their childhood.

For years, the sisters have lived the same routine, governed by the Almanac that their mother compiled during their childhood. The garden provides everything the sisters need to survive, and they are content: the world outside their walls holds no temptation for them. However, something happens that breaks this harmony.

The characters are eccentric but not unrelatable, despite their unusual upbringing and social isolation. They have distinct personalities and so it's very interesting to see how they react to the events in the book and how they deal with the conflicts that arise.

It's a dark, moving, and contemplative novel. Low on action but still suspenseful. Some elements of the dystopia are left open-ended by design, which for me didn't take away from my enjoyment of the story but could potentially frustrate readers who live to find out all the answers!

A very unusual book, set in some dystopia following a climate catastrophe (I think). Lily and Evelyn had been living with their parents in a large house, then things changed, their staff and everyone else left and their mother 'took charge' to keep them safe, but in doing so condemns them to live out their lives to her instructions. They focussed on their garden, which would be the source of food.

The book shows us their life, and their past lives, in a very gentle but determined way so that the horror of their situation builds. And as another storm seems to threaten, they will be pushed to try to keep themselves safe and alive, which is hard as they are now old women, becoming frail and Lily in particular is increasingly dissatisfied with her existence.

Its an enjoyable read that will keep me thinking for quite some time. The end is not tied up neatly with a bow, which suits this genre, as the pattern of life continues. Thank you to NetGalley, Random House UK and Transworld Publishers for allowing me access to the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Wow. This book was *so* good. The Garden is a haunting dystopian tale that locks you in from the opening scene and leaves you quickly turning the pages thereafter.

I won’t give anything away but while the The Garden is the focus for the story, Newman’s world-building around it is so well presented but equally offers the reader an opportunity to interpret in their own way the post-apocalyptic world in which Evelyn and Lily - the keepers of the garden - find themselves in.

I can already see this being one of my top reads of the year.

The Garden by Nick Newman is a novel about the lives of 2 sisters Evelyn and Lily who live in a derelict estate and spend their days tending to.the garden.

This was an interesting novel and I did enjoy it but I feel.there were a lot of things that were left unanswered.

The book is very well written and the characters feel real. This is the first book I have read by this author but I will be looking out for more.

In a garden at the end of the world, two elderly sisters diligently follow the ancient almanac left by their mother telling them when to plant and when to harvest. It doesn't matter that the seasons no longer arrive when expected or that Evelyn knows more than the crumbling pages or that Lily has never really taken the instructions seriously. They are all that is left in the world, reliant on each other and their garden, an oasis in the desolate dusty sea of a dying world. Until they aren't. A dirty, ragged boy appears in the garden. But it's not just that he's arrived, it's that he's still alive, and his presence shatters their carefully constructed reality.

A gradually stifling story that hooked me immediately. At first, the garden feels like a gentle utopia clinging on in a dystopian world, but with each turn of the page the atmosphere becomes more taut and suffocating. The story switches between when the sisters were younger, living in the house with their parents as hints of outside trouble start to filter through, and to when they are alone and elderly, scraping a living from the garden, holding on to the fears instilled in them by their mother.
This book reminded me of Metronome, two people isolated from a collapsing outside world, and, like that book, you won't get any answers to what is really causing the situation. It's much more a focused on the sisters - the tenderness of their relationship mixed with the suffocating isolation they suffer and influence their parents behaviour continues to have on them.

The Garden by Nick Newman | Published date: Jan 30 2025

So, this was a quite unsettling and atmospheric novel, with hints of gothic horror. The story follows two elderly sisters, Evelyn and Lily, who live in a mysterious walled garden and their lives go by routines established by their late mother. You get only a slight idea that this is a post-apocalyptic world and can only imagine what is beyond those walls. Suddenly, their isolated existence is disrupted by the arrival of a mysterious boy, and their carefully ordered world begins to unsettle, revealing secrets and a reality more disturbing than they ever imagined.
I can’t say I didn’t enjoy this story. However, with its slow-burning narrative and the writer’s explorations of themes like isolation, obedience, and the fragility of human perception, I had a bit of trouble getting into it. A great read for fans of horror with a touch of the surreal.

This was an unusual and quite haunting story of Evelyn and Lily, two elderly sisters living in the kitchen of their grand old house. in what one assumes to be a post apocalyptic world. The author manages to create both a sense of domesticity and dread particularly when they find a boy in what they thought was their secure home and garden. Little glimpses of their life before are hinted at and there are some shocking events, but the book has an almost dreamlike, or maybe nightmare, quality and I feeI I will be thinking about for some time.
Thank you to netgalley and Random House for an advance copy of this book.

With thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for an advance review copy.

The Garden is an effective addition to the post apocalyptic genre. Climate change has led to hot seasons punctuated by rare but savage dust storms in a setting that, though undefined, seems to be the south of England. Evelyn and Lily are two ageing sisters who have not emerged from their country mansion in what might be fifty years or more. They live entirely in the kitchen of the big house and tend to the house gardens which keep them self-sufficient. They are strangely child-like, still completely dominated by the rules and routines of their long-dead mother, who chose to hole up in the house and barricade herself and her daughters from an increasingly dangerous outside world as the extreme weather led to desperate behaviour by those who survived. Every day they tend to the garden, following an increasingly unreliable almanac devised by their mother. They live by the rules she made when they were still in their teens, and as the older of the two sisters Evelyn shoulders the heavy burden of shielding her sister from the horrors she remembers happening and the other nameless horrors - "men's things" - that their mother has filled her head with.

Into this unquestioned day to day existence of survival and sibling closeness comes a most unwelcome incursion in the form of a boy from the outside world, a boy who will grow up to be a man. His very existence, never mind his actual presence, threatens the fragile survival narrative that Evelyn has internalised, and then their very existence comes under threat too as the outside world which has rallied after all comes calling.

There are multiple layers to this story, which keep the reader engrossed and guessing both at the narrative level and the psychological one. I had two maiden aunts who were completely under their mother's thumb and I couldn't stop seeing parallels in the depiction of two elderly women in arrested development thanks to a domineering mother whose influence extends beyond her death. The world they live in, ravaged by a climate disaster of man's making, is all too easy to imagine coming true. And the savagery that survival all too often entails is all the more horrifying for being alluded to rather than explicitly described and dwelt upon. So the ending, on a note of hope, was very welcome.

This is very well written and expertly paced for the most part. It is a compulsive read and is recommended.

What is absolutely clear is that Nick Newman knows how to deliver a very gripping story! He unfurled his narrative line around me, leaving me with no other option but to go along for the ride! What felt very eerie for me was the familiarity of the story! As if I've read this story before! I think what made me feel this was his choice of timeless themes/location/characters. Take the house - it is the quintessential English country manor house, with an impressive facade, imposing staircase leading to the upper floors - and one can already imagine the balls/parties alluded at in the narrative. And then you have the garden with its own lake and sprawling grounds encase by an impenetrable wall! Of course everything happening behind closed doors seems plausible. The timelessness extends to the characters: the 2 sisters: one dreamy and apparently not concerned with the world around her, the other down to earth and overly controlling. The mother, a damaged and controlling person, wrecking the lives of those she was suppose to love ...my heart absolutely ached for the sisters.

*Now that I've had a few days to think about it, I've changed my rating from 4 to 5 stars. I also think that it gave me a mixture of We Have Always Lived in the Castle and I Capture the Castle vibes. The Garden is a weird mixture of the two, set in a post-global warming era!

I really thought the blurb made this book sound intriguing and dark. However it just wasn't my cup of tea. I love reading thrillers but unfortunately I found this book really lacking a plot. The premise is there and I kept thinking 'okay this must be leading to something...' but it never really materialised into a big reveal or twist.

I enjoyed this dystopia, about two old women living in their secluded house in fear of what lies beyond the wall, well enough, but it took far too long to get going for me.

The most interesting part was the author's slight subversion of the dystopian trope of 'normal' protagonists trying to avoid whatever craziness is now at large in the world (in books such as McCarthy's 'The Road'). As The Garden progresses, we are forced to consider whether the protagonists might stranger than whatever is outside their garden.

An interesting book but never quite caught fire for me.

A very strange and disturbing story about two abandoned sisters in a dystopian future who meet a boy who comes to visit after they have been isolated for many years. The sisters were tutored by their mother in many things, and keep the garden going while outside their wall they believe society has collapsed and no-one is left.

A boy arrives abruptly over the wall, and the constraints the sisters have put upon themselves shockingly start to fall.

I haven't seen an atmosphere like this created in a book before, and it is very disorientating as you try to workout what is happening and also what has happened in the past. Confusing and shocking in equal measure.

From the blurb of this, citing two elderly sisters, a garden and an orphan waif, I was expecting a gentle story, but I could not have been more wrong. This dark dystopian tale follows the struggles of two elderly sisters as they strive to survive in a world shattered by some unknown global catastrophe. They never venture beyond the grounds of their dilapidated manor house, not step beyond its kitchen, where they live and sleep. For who knows what danger lies outside the gates? Or what secrets lie hidden beyond the kitchen door?
Their peace is shattered by an unknown young boy they catch stealing their honey. Is he frontrunner for an invasion of feared fellow humans? Or is he seeking refuge, too?
This was a gripping and excellent read. The two sisters, so very different in some ways and so alike in others, are skilfully portrayed in all their strength and vulnerability. Their fractious relationship with each other and their long-dead mother is revealed in flashbacks throughout the narrative, which never loses its air of tension and danger, whether it is taking us to the past or keeping us in the present.
Dystopian tales lately have tended to focus on women laid low by men's desire to dominate, and this story hints at that. But just as for the sisters, for the reader what has happened in the outside world doesn't really matter - it is what happens in their garden that counts. The sisters are so complex, so interesting and so unusual in themselves that they remain the focus throughout.
I loved the little references to The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett - they underscored the sisters' sometimes childlike outlook on life.
Themes of guilt and innocence, darkness and light, hope and despair permeate the pages of this story. I honestly could not put it down, and I highly recommend it to everyone. Whatever else I read in 2025, it's definitely going to be one of my top ten.

The Garden by Nick Newman is a post apocalyptic tale with a wonderully ominous sense of dread that builds deliciously as the story unfolds.
Evelyn and Lily are two elderly sisters who live alone in a shut off part of their family home , in some time and place unknown where climate change has caused devastating dust storms and society has fallen apart. Isolated from the oustide world since childhood the pair still live by the strange rules of their long dead mother, and survive largely on the fruits and vegetables they grow in the garden that she started. They are deathly afraid of the world outside their garden walls and of the dangerous Men that would surely kill them at the earliest opportunity but living cooped up together is also not without its tensions and difficulties. When they notice that some things are being moved around in the house and garden they find that their wall has been breached and immediately start to hunt for the intruder, leading to the discovey of the young boy who will dramatically upend their lonely existence.
This book had such a wonderfully strange and mesmerising quailty that I found I simply did not want to put it down, Though vague on the details of how the sisters ended up where they are the author gives enough hints for the reader to draw their own conclusions, helped of course by a number of chapters that take us back to the sister's childhood I thought the idea of writing a post apocalyptic novel from such a narrow perspective was really interesting and the author did it wonderfully well, by keeping both the characters and the reader in the dark about what was going on outside the garden there was a real feeling of claustrophobia and fear of the unknown that gave some tension to the book and made for unsettling but compelling reading.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own

Evelyn and Lily are two daughters living in the kitchen of a grand house, tending the garden and living off the produce, while climate change has made desert and dust storms a constant threat. The walls keep the desperate or curious out and they do not venture into the house because of the dark memories it holds.
The reader is intrigued by the lives of the two women, their relationship and that of their past history with their mother and father, gradually revealed in flashbacks. When a boy breaks in to their isolated existence, the relationship is tested and shocking secrets are revealed.
This dystopian novel cleverly subverts the doomsday prepper narrative, suggesting that community and coming together to build a future is stronger than going it alone and losing ourselves.

4.5

I'm not normally a fan of dystopian fiction but the cover of this book had me hooked and I only skim read the synopsis so it was a but of a surprise when I began reading.

However I thoroughly enjoyed The Garden, which tells the story of Evelyn and Lily, elderly sisters who live within the confines of the kitchen and garden of a large, otherwise uninhabited house. As the story progresses we learn that some catastrophe has befallen their world. It is unclear the nature - manmade or natural - but it has brought huge storms to the land covering it in feet of dust on occasion.

Lily and Evelyn have lived in the same house their whole lives; their father has left and their mother has died leaving behind a garden that the girls tend to provide their food.

However one day a stranger arrives, which begins a series of events that will change their lives forever.

Nick Newman has written a wonderfully atmospheric novel that has you guessing all the way through as to the true nature of the womens' predicament. I could vividly picture their home and garden, and their fear of what lies beyond the walls is palpable.

A really interesting and entertaining read. Definitely recommended.

Thanks to Netgalley and Transworld Books for the advance review copy. Most appreciated.

Lily & Evelyn, two elderly women, live alone, barricaded away from a world which they are scared of, tending their garden. When a boy is found within the walls, their world changes as they begin to question what they believe in as well as their relationship to each other.

This novel left me feeling quite unsettled for reasons I won't go into for fear of spoiling the plot, yet I thoroughly enjoyed it! The two women's oddness and the way they respond to each other made me invest in what happened next.