The Cutting Garden: A Graphic Novel
A mysterious young girl seeks out a florist to deliver a painful truth that will forever change them both in this tender, gothic drama about our need for love and the creatures we become in its absence.
On a quiet street in early twentieth-century New Orleans, a florist works through the night to craft a floral arrangement for a peculiar customer—a precocious young girl named Adeil who pays the florist in stories. For every new flower the florist adds to the bouquet, Adeil offers another dissonant detail in her narrative: a chance meeting with a disillusioned jazz singer, a dilapidated family home, an idyllic life on the fringes of an imperfect world. As dawn approaches and the arrangement takes shape, the florist is left to piece together the final details of Adeil’s mysterious life and ponder what this means for her own story.
From Eisner Award-winning writer Darcy Van Poelgeest (Little Bird, Precious Metal) and rising-star watercolor artist Erin Connally comes The Cutting Garden, a gorgeously rendered meditation on companionship, family, and sacrifice.
- Pages
- 128
- First published
- 2026
- ISBN
- 9781534330801
Shelved by 1 Litcadian
Reviews
Finished March 15, 2026
The illustrations here are absolutely gorgeous. The artwork alone makes this a striking graphic novel and really sets the tone for the eerie, dreamlike world the story is trying to create. Unfortunately, the story itself felt a bit too vague for my taste. While the mysterious tone is clearly intentional, the plot never fully came together. I kept waiting for the narrative to sharpen or for the emotional core to land more clearly, but it never quite got there. Because of that it's hard to connect with Josette and Adeil since there's not enough substance to their individual stories. Overall the illustrations are worth picking this up, but the story left me wanting a bit more depth and clarity. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.