Published By: Type Eighteen Books
Pages: 225
Released On: 15/01/2026
Hayden Hill has always felt most comfortable with his hands in dirt, nurturing life. He designs natural spaces for others and comes home to his back yard, where he seeks refuge amidst the fruits and vegetables, flora, and shade-giving trees. When he finds himself suddenly a widower, his garden becomes the resting place for the ashes of his wife, Shelly, and he’s thrown into an unexpected vortex of pain, shock, and guilt. As Hayden struggles to survive the torment of each day and keep his landscaping company functioning, a directive in Shelly’s will leads him to the discovery of a shocking secret.
Fighting to find a path through the weeds of grief, Hayden meets his wife’s secret connections and becomes involved helping local, homeless teens cast out by their families for choosing to be who they are. Rocked by this newly discovered, complicated facet of Shelly’s life, he begins to question their marriage, her identity, his past choices, and whether anything he believed about his wife was ever true.
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Type Eighteen Books for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
Everything about this book interested me. From the cover to the title to the premise – it definitely sounded like my kind of book.
Grief is very difficult to write about, even for someone who has gone through their fair share of it I am not sure I could put it into words. But the opening chapter of this book, Cassondra has perfectly explored grief and all the emotions that come with it – anger, despair, longing, fear, sadness. It’s not too much and it’s very sensitive. It reads as if Cassondra herself has gone through it for it to read so naturally.
It’s a very…introverted book, if that’s the right word. It’s mostly Hayden’s thoughts, actions, feelings, decisions. It’s minimal on dialogue and heavy on narrative, which I prefer as I really struggle to write convincing dialogue so I like it when I read a book I can really link to and this was that book.
I really enjoyed the link with flowers and plants, how emotions and feelings and experiences and grief and people are their own type of flora or foliage. And at first think, how can you compare someone to a rhododendron for example, but then you read it and it’s really quite obvious. And the comparisons between grief and life after death and the circle of life and the natura world was just beautiful.
Hayden is a very good main character – I mean, he’s practically on every single page. He feels very real, flawed, he’s struggling, overwhelmed and lonely, and you just want to take his hand and tell him it’ll be okay in the end.
Yes there are some difficult topics and it does ask some difficult conversations but it never feels like hard work. It doesn’t overwhelm or overload the reader at any point, and so they can still enjoy reading it as entertainment as well as answering some difficult and controversial questions.
It could have been quite a depression book given its focus on grief (and other topics I won’t spoil) and yes whilst there are sadder elements, overall I’d say it’s got quite an uplifting feel about it, about continuing your life whilst keeping memories alive. About how life can, and must, go on after loss.
It is a relatively short book and quick to read. I read it in an afternoon as it was so absorbing. I loved Cassondra’s style of writing and I will definitely keep my eye out for her other work.
Books By Your Bedside 