Thank you to Simon Teen for an ARC!

I've always loved Shea Ernshaw's books, there is always something magical about them. This book has a bit of creepiness to it, because you know, cursed tulips and all. Shea Ernshaw always has lovely writing, and it's easy to see how she can create a haunting atmosphere.

I have a few thoughts about this book, which is why I'm not sure what I'd rate it to be honest. At about 33% we've learned a little bit about our main characters, and the major issue that is going to need to be solved in this book. Yet, not much else has happened. The characters themselves aren't terribly fleshed out. I honestly felt the book was lacking. I wasn't invested in the characters or the story as I would have wanted.

Even the main romance lacked. I felt almost nothing. The book was for the most part slow. Which would have been forgiveable if there'd been some character arcs or at least development. It just all felt bland to me. Nothing really there. This book had the same vibes as her previous works, but I felt like it lacked sustenance.

There are a few nods to her first book in this one, which when compared to this...I'm not sure what I was expecting or hoping for, I just didn't love the book.

Thank you so much to Simon Teen for sending me an eARC of The Beautiful Maddening. This is a beautiful book that explores love, fate and freedom.
Lark and her family has been cursed for years by the tulips that bloom each spring. The power of the tulips forces those around her to fall in love. They lose their hearts to her family so the town ostracizes them. Lark wants nothing more than to run away and never return until the unexpected happens. She meets Oak who is unaffected by their curse. This begins a summer of love but also so many more questions.
I loved the lore in this story. The magic of the flowers was so unique. I found myself always searching for more traces of the curse lurking throughout the story. Lark was a strong FMC to follow. I was rooting for her to follow her own destiny throughout the story. I was hoping to see more development from her brother than what was shown. I also appreciated Oak and his part that he played in the story. I still find myself having a hard time trusting him but I was happy with how the story ended. Overall, this was a really unique idea for a book and I think it would be perfect for older teens! Thank you again to Simon Teen!

This was such a cozy and magical book. It was atmospheric and beautiful and I absolutely loved it!! I loved the characters and the setting. The plot was so unique, it was unlike anything I’ve read before!

I have read and enjoyed several of Shea Ernshaw’s books, and while I didn’t love this one, I did find it enjoyable.

I can always count on excellent atmospheric writing in an Ernshaw book, and she delivered here. The descriptions of the Goode household, the garden, and the land it resided on was so detailed that I could easily picture it. The family curse plot was done in an interesting way, and I loved the way nature played a role in that. I could feel the tension growing as the issue got deeper, and I was needing to see how it would turn out.

I think the biggest reason I didn’t love this book came down to a me issue. While the plot was intriguing, I didn’t feel as invested in the story as I wanted to be. It didn’t feel super high stakes, and the romance plot also left me wanting more. Obviously this is a YA book and the writing is skewed that way, so that’s why I say that I think this was a me issue.

While this wasn’t a favorite of mine, I can definitely see other people liking this one!

~Young-Adult, Fantasy, Romance, and more!~

3.5| This book was a unique and enjoyable read. While the premise itself was interesting, I found the story itself a little lackluster. This is mostly due to the lack of connection I felt with the characters. Archer was quite unlikeable in the beginning, and while his character improved throughout the book, it was still difficult to feel sympathetic towards him. Lark and Oaks' relationship felt a little too obsessive in the beginning, which made it hard for me to root for their relationship. The real showstopper in this book, as always in Shea Ernshaw's books, is her writing. The world the story takes place in is described in such beautiful detail that it creates an enchanting and atmospheric experience. I enjoyed the history of the Goode family, and I liked where the story was going up until the very end. While I never felt like I wanted to DNF this book, I did have a hard time getting into it. It overall just felt a bit too slow in some parts, which made it difficult to pick up again. My main wishes for this book would be an expansion on the tulip's magic and a longer and more detailed epilogue. Overall, I enjoyed this book, and I do think it would be rated higher if it weren't a Shea Ernshaw book, but I have come to expect so much from her books that it's hard not to compare. I did love the subtle nod to her previous book. A good book, just didn't quite hit all the marks I expected. Still a pleasant read, I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a captivating book.

Larks family has been cursed by love. The tulips that grow by their home are magic, and cause anyone who smells them to be madly in love with someone in their family - usually her or her brother Archer. They've come to an understanding with the curse, and they've accepted it as a part of their lives. But when Lark meets a boy who seems unaffected, everything changes.

She always planned to be leave, but now she is questioning everything. Especially when someone steals all of the tulips! Watching her work through the fact that Oak is unaffected by the tulips and her desire to leave town and escape the curse was so well done. This was beautifully written and incredibly heartbreaking.

I once had a fever dream, years and years ago, that was so visceral, so gritty, it felt real—and it’s lived with me since then. In my dream, it was crystals that people tore my town apart for, skittering around on all fours like monkeys and ripping each other apart just to hold one. For Lark Goode, it’s tulips.

Shea Ernshaw’s The Beautiful Maddening reads like that kind of dream. It's lush and poetic, but under the surface—dark and buzzing, like something is rotting just beneath the beauty. This story is magical realism at its best: grounded in emotion, blooming with dread.

Lark Goode has grown up knowing that love isn’t safe. Every spring, the cursed tulips outside her house bloom, and with them comes madness—anyone who gets too close to her or her twin brother, Archer, falls in love. Archer, golden and unbothered, uses the tulips like a charm. Lark just wants to graduate and disappear. But of course, nothing in Cutwater is that easy.

By the end of senior year, someone steals dozens of the tulips and starts selling them at school. Suddenly, the whole town is infected. Students clutching flowers fall madly in love—with power, with each other, with themselves. Chaos spreads. And worst of all, the truth comes out: it was never the Goodes. It was the flowers all along.

Enter Holden—or Oak—a boy from the next town over. He’s the only person who’s ever looked at Lark and felt…nothing. No madness. No swooning. Just calm indifference. It should be a relief. But it becomes something far more dangerous: real connection.

The romance here is forbidden and fragile, tinged with the ache of what can never be. The prose is gorgeous, dripping with atmosphere and sorrow. Ernshaw explores themes of generational curses, identity, desire, and sacrifice with aching subtlety. It’s about how love can be both a gift and a sickness, how beauty can undo us, and how sometimes, the only way to survive is to destroy what we love most.

My only reason for docking half a star is that I wished for just a little more time at the end—more breathing room after the climax, more clarity on certain magical mechanics. But the emotional resonance is what lingers, and that stayed with me long after the last page.

The Beautiful Maddening is a story that blooms like a ghost in your chest—delicate, terrifying, and impossible to forget.

I adore how this book blends romance, mystery, and family secrets into an unforgettable story that will stay with me.

I kindly thank NetGalley and the publisher, Simon & Schuster, for giving me an ARC of this book.

That being said, as much as I appreciate a free sneak peek of this book, I didn't like it.

Many other reviewers noted that the story dragged in the beginning but then sped up as time went on. For me, the story dragged, sped up a little, and then dragged down again at the end. The prose is beautiful and flowery, but it drew the story out for way too long.

The premise of the plot was good. It sounded really interesting and fairly different from most YA novels that NetGalley recommends to me. I liked Lark, the main character, though I think she goes through a character assassination right at the end. That's all I'll say about that to avoid spoilers.

Perhaps I'm too old to be a target audience for this book, and that's why I didn't like it. I procrastinated reading it and only really finished because I knew that writing a review was the least I could do in exchange for the ARC.

To improve this story, it needs:

- to be trimmed event-wise. The ending needs cut down. Also, if I see an epilogue, I want to know what the characters we just read about are doing years later.
-to get rid of Lark's character assassination or better explain the choice she made (also, her thinking that the flowers don't work when she literally saw them work at school makes zero sense).
-to care about Archer a little more. At the end, Lark is just like: "Nah, he's fine." and forgets about him.
-to make the reader care about Lark finally finding real love. Maybe it's because I stopped reading for a while to finish a college semester, but I found myself not really caring about what happened to Lark and Oak. I wanted them to have a happy ending (because that's the kind of person I am) but wouldn't feel too devastated if they didn't.

Sorry for the harsh review, y'all! I am not a professional editor (though I want to be!), so I could be wrong about some of this stuff.

I really enjoyed this book. It has the mysterious element of the curse and a girl who is just trying to leave her town and not return. I enjoyed the interactions between Lark and Archer they definitely are twins who are total opposite. This was an enjoyable read and I couldn't put this book down.

This book was soft, romantic, heartbreaking, and magical. Shea Ernshaw's writing is meant to be savored. This story captured my attention from the very first page. The writing was lyrical and atmospheric. I will be rereading this book in the future because I enjoyed it so much. I liked the connection that Ernshaw made to her book, The Wicked Deep. I adored Lark and Oak and I was rooting for them from the very beginning.

Thank you NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for this arc in exchange for an honest review!

"We write our own story, not what anyone else tells us it should be."

Great writing with a story I wasn't sold on.

Mixed feelings seem to be typical for me when reading Shea Ernshaw's books. Her writing is SO good but there seem to be inevitable parts of her stories that leave me with real ICK.

This story centers around a cruse that makes people fall in love with a certain family in town, and the FMC's twin brother is actively taking advantage of all of these girls who are being affected by this curse, and this has real consent issues for me and I couldn't drop that for the entirety of this book. You see that in an even worse scenario from their parents. Just ICK.

But I liked the main characters and their developing relationship and the ending was real good until the VERY end.

I just don't know if I'm made for her books 😣

The Beautiful Maddening by Shea Ernshaw is a captivating young adult fantasy romance that ensnared my interest from the very first page and maintained my engagement until the final word. With its enchanting narrative and richly developed characters, this novel weaves a spellbinding tale that lingers in the mind long after the last chapter.

Shea Ernshaw writes lush, modern fairytales for a YA audience. I really enjoy the way this story was paced and laid out. I enjoyed this magical fever dream of a book.

I love this novella. I started long time ago and paused because I had to finish others books, but the moment I get back to this one I been reading without stopping. Love the mysticism that surrounds the Goode family, the madness they believe is chasing all of them through the tulips from their garden.
My mommy heart broke for Archer and Lark, this siblings left it to deal with the mistakes of their parents keeps me ranting toward the adults every time I read their pain and how they have to deal with the rumors and gossip of everybody on that town. And same goes for Oak, another one who I wanted to hug and not let it go.
I finished the book crying a little because the author really got me deep with this story. Is full of emotions, so sensitive and heartbroken, but after all so encouraging to leave that place that is not doing anything good to your self, to persuade a life well deserved and this last part which I may not agree, keep and secure that love and happiness at the cost of hidden what may be not at all real or true, Lark, girl, you absolutely deserved it, and I’m here to cheer for you!

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing | Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers for providing an ARC, I’m giving freely my honest review.

Thank you to Simon and Schuester for a copy of this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion. I love everything that Shea writes and this is no exception. The writing so poetic and flowy and beautiful. I just felt like not enough happened for me. I wanted some more tension and angst from the characters. I also felt like we could’ve dug in a little deeper with her parents and Oak’s parents. I liked how haunting and atmospheric it felt though.

This haunting and atmospherical new read by Shea Ernshaw was captivating—and full of cursed flowers, summer loves, and thrilling mystery.

Everyone in town knows the Goodes as an enigma, a mysterious family full of myths and lore. What they don’t know is every spring, once the tulips in the Goode’s yard blossom, there’s a magnetic, magical pull towards the family members, almost like falling in love.

I will always love Ernshaw’s beautifully crafted mysteries with fated almost tragic love stories, and with this book, I adored the idea of a cursed garden and bewitching lore. The spring-to-summer vibes were immaculate and completely immersive. With that being said, I wished the book was longer and themes like the mystery and the star-crossed romance more fleshed out and even more tortured.

3.5/5

*Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.*

I really enjoy Shea Ernshaw's books. This story is definitely a slow burn and I really love how much it lets the lyrical and dreamy quality of her writing shine. The magic system of her world is so intriguing and I loved the nods to her other work confirming these magical occurrences are all in the same world. The magical realism of her books is already so well done but these interconnections while still being separate magic really enhanced the magic system for me. It's adds an air of course no one questions the Goode family's magic they just question (and gossip about) how it came to be and how its maintained. The characters are well written and I particularly enjoyed seeing how the twins different views on the family's curse shaped their differences in so many ways. The romance was a sweet twisty slow burn that fits the vibe of Ernshaw's writing so well. The larger longing for love and the magic of the tulips and how that wraps into the romance of the book was just so well done. All around a wonderfully dreamy read.

Shea's stories are like poetry. Her words breathe life. And every one of her books is singular and bewitching.

The Beautiful Maddening was a passionate and unshakeable love story that reeled me in uncontrollably from the start. It played out like a movie in my head. I could hear Lark narrating the beginning scenes, lamenting her family's curse, wholly determined to leave it all behind. It was angsty and tension-filled, emotional and true, haunting and eerie. Shea’s words flow so naturally and freely. There’s an ease to her storytelling, her word choice and sentence structure, her stories in general, that I always find myself inhaling the book in the best way possible. 

Lark and Oak seem to be doomed from the start, but Shea weaves a masterful tale of hope, betrayal, longing and madness within pockets of whimsy, folklore, and magic. A pin prick of light, second to the right, within the maddening darkness of their tale. And when I got to the end... I full-toothed smiled, not in a "oh what a wonderful happily-ever-after, bear hug" sort of way (a little), but much more hauntingly, in a "oh shit the author just did that and I love it" sort of way. The kind of ending that stays with you and keeps you thinking long after you close the pages because it's unique and different and just a little bit unexpected. 

I'm so glad to have gotten an early copy of this. Thank you to the publisher for my advanced edition.

If you've loved Shea's previous works, you will love this just the same!

okay this was a beautiful story, I loved the idea of magic tulips, it's just so MAGICAL and honestly my vibe so I was all in for this one. I haven't read all of Ernshaw's books but I really need to, I was so captivated by the magic and the gothic vibes and the love story and just everything about this.