lesley_roman 's review for:

The Poppy Fields by Nikki Erlick

3.5

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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Thanks to my amazing book club, I received an ARC of The Poppy Fields and, honestly, I struggled at first. Erlick’s prose is nonstop. Every sentence felt like running a marathon, and I kept putting the book down after a few pages. But then I switched to the audiobook and it was a game changer. The narrator’s pacing and inflections gave those lengthy sentences some breathing room and within a few chapters I was completely engrossed. The story itself is surprisingly warm. A group of strangers, each carrying their own brand of grief, end up traveling together to a controversial retreat where you can sleep through the worst of it. The facility and its founder come under fire for the potential heartbreaking side effects of this month‑long sleep, which raises some good questions about how far we’d go to dull our pain. If you can embrace its sentence structure, it really is a beautiful, thought‑provoking story that reminds us grief doesn’t heal on a schedule, but others can make the journey a little less lonely.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Grief