Meet Me in the Garden

• Author: Nina LaCour
• Genre: Historical Fiction
• Publication Date: August 4, 2026
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for providing me with an ARC of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

From bestselling author Nina LaCour comes a sweeping family saga that wrestles with themes of self-discovery and love in all forms, inspired by the author’s own Creole family

New Orleans, 1944. Odette has always been one of the Honore sisters, glamorous and admired in their Creole community. But while Odette’s older sisters are content to be wives and mothers, Odette has always wanted something else. It is only with her beloved cousin, Delphine, that Odette can tell her secret: she is in love with a woman, and she longs to be an artist. Delphine has a secret lover, too, a white man. In the hidden garden they’ve discovered, Odette and Delphine can dream of futures full of passion and freedom.

But five years later, Odette’s life is nothing like what she’d planned. She’s a widowed mother, living in Los Angeles, and she and Delphine, who is passing as white, have spiraled away from each other. When Delphine reaches a breaking point, Odette must make a shattering choice to try to hold her family together.

Profound and expansive, a story of love and longing, art and motherhood, friendship and desire, Meet Me in the Garden is a decades-spanning tour de force, inspired by the author’s family and tracing the history of the Great Migration.

I was fortunate enough to be approved for an ARC of this audiobook and was excited to get into it. I’ve read one of her prior books and enjoyed it enough that I was intrigued to see more of her work. This one had a super interesting premise, and I was excited to know Odette’s story, which comes with both joys and pain, and includes some heavier themes.

The narrator for this book is Angel Pean, who does an outstanding job with the story. Her mellow, smooth narration perfectly fit what I would have imagined Odette’s voice to sound like. She truly inhabited the role and maintained a laid-back tone throughout the novel that kept me feeling like she was almost whispering secrets in my ear instead of Delphine’s in the garden. 

Revisiting the past comes with joy and pain, often both at the same time. It is no different with this story, and she’s an easy character to get to know. The pacing is deliberately slow and meandering as we weave through Odette’s past. It is a story that starts out in 1944 where we meet the Honore sisters: three sisters with a glamorous standing in the Creole community of New Orleans. Since the story is told through Odette’s eyes, we have a fuller understanding of her and less of her sisters. They never stood out to me, and maybe it is because I read this as an audiobook that I struggled to differentiate between her sisters.

Heavy themes arise early on—racism and colorism, along with queer romance at a time when it was not accepted in society and carried legal penalties for being ‘a crime of nature.’ As part of the New Orleans Creole community, there seems to be more of a value on lighter skin, demonstrating serious colorism when one of the Honore sisters marries a man with dark skin, and expresses her frustration with her daughter what she refers to ‘undoing the work of generations focusing on lightening their skin.’ It put a heavy strain on the sister’s relationship with her mother, but not her sisters, who were just happy to see her happy. 

While her sisters seem to find their lives with their husbands and eventually their children fulfilling, Odette has a very different view of what she would like her future to contain. The central setting of the garden where Odette and Delphine share their secrets and escape the crushing weight of societal expectations for a short time is where Odette feels comfortable sharing her secret with Delphine. Odette is free to talk about her attraction to women, and the relationship she’s kept secret to protect her lover and herself. In turn, Delphine shares about the relationship she’s kept secret because her lover is a white man and she’s Creole. These cousins are as close as sisters, but as their lives begin to diverge, time and life comes between them. 

Years later, Odette finds herself living as a widow with a young son, in Los Angeles. She is estranged from Delphine, and it takes a huge emotional toll on Odette to have ties severed by Delphine, who is passing as white and married to the man she was secretly dating. Fortunately, she has her family surrounding her and offering support to her and her young son as she acclimates to a whole new side of life. She’s happy with her status as widow, but she eventually finds herself in an ideal situation with a job she loves, a loving family, and incredible friends. The journey through Odette’s life was a long and winding one, but I loved watching her calm, laidback personality in action.

This was a really interesting story about the life of one woman, but it also has threads of those around her woven into it. She gravitates towards some really incredible people in her life, and it was fascinating to watch the slow progression through the story. However, I had a lot of difficulty with differentiating between the many side characters, which could be due to having read this as an audiobook, since I can’t quite keep things straight the way I can when seeing something presented visually. 

Overall, this was a really good book as I’d have expected from LaCour. There were some really great aspects of the book, such as the discussions of difficult topics, including racism, colorism within a mixed-race community, passing as white, and queerness in America throughout different periods of history moving towards more acceptance of LGBTQIA+ people. The pace was deliberately slow, but this was also a relatively low-stakes story, so if felt as though it was very long without making much progress. While I was very invested in Odette’s story, I found that the pace was a little bit too slow. I would have liked to see more depth in some of the discussions about racism and in the side characters, who often come across as flat and underdeveloped. I’m always pulled in by stories about queer people at different points in history and different places, and this was no different. I loved seeing how Odette adapted to the times and was devoted to her family while mourning her relationship with Delphine. There is also a focus on art in the story—Odette is a talented artist and as she lives an unfulfilling life, she is able is forced to channel her emotions through that art, but experiencing periods where she doesn’t create any art at all. It was a good indicator of where she was in her life and how content she feels, and added more depth to her character. So there were some ups and downs, but the positives outweighed the negatives in this story. I will still check out LaCour’s future books, since I know she’s a great writer.

Bottom line: A deep dive into the life of one queer Creole woman in the 20th century as she encounters racism, colorism, love, grief, and loss along with the criminalization of queerness into a more accepting and open future.

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