On a random Thursday afternoon, Ellie Lerners life is turned upside-down when she learns the heartbreaking news that Lucy, her best friend since childhood, has been murdered on the tree-lined streets of Notting Hill. And, as best friends do, Ellie drops everything: her marriage, her job, her life in the Boston suburbs to travel to London to pick up the pieces. While Lucys shell-shocked husband, Greg, seeks solace in work and the pub, her brilliant and traumatized child, Sophie, has simply stopped speaking. Desperate to help Sophie, Ellie turns to a book that gave her comfort as a child, The Secret Garden. As the two spend hours exploring the novel’s winding passageways, its story of hurt, magic, and healing blooms around them. But so, too, do the secrets Lucy kept hidden, even from her best friend. Over a summer in London, as Ellie peels back the layers of her friend’s life, she’s forced to confront her own as well. Suddenly her carefully constructed existence spins out of control in a chain of events that will transform her life and the lives of those around her forever.