Goldy Moldavsky’s latest young adult novel, Of Earthly Delights, is a haunting modern gothic romance that explores the intoxicating and destructive power of love. Set against the backdrop of a mystical garden with dark secrets, this story examines how far we’re willing to go for the ones we love—and the devastating consequences of getting exactly what we wish for.
What begins as a seemingly straightforward tale of teenage love quickly transforms into something far more sinister and thought-provoking. Moldavsky weaves a narrative that feels simultaneously timeless and contemporary, drawing readers into a world where magic exists in plain sight but comes with a terrible price.
The Roots: Setting and Premise
The novel opens with Rose Pauly, a New York City transplant who finds herself reluctantly moving to small-town Connecticut with her father after her parents’ divorce. Within hours of arriving in Meadow Falls, Rose meets Hart Hargrove, a boy whose beauty is matched only by his passion for gardening.
Moldavsky expertly establishes the town of Meadow Falls as the antithesis to Rose’s beloved New York—quiet, pristine, and seemingly perfect on the surface. The Hargrove estate, Hemlock Hill, serves as a microcosm of this contrast, its expansive grounds containing mysterious “garden rooms” with flora that shouldn’t be able to grow together and a hedge maze at its center that few have managed to solve.
The author’s greatest strength is in her world-building. The garden at Hemlock Hill feels like a character unto itself—alive, responsive, and harboring dark intentions beneath its breathtaking beauty. When Moldavsky describes the “Wish Garden” at the center of the hedge maze, you can almost smell the impossible combinations of flowers and feel the strange electricity in the air.
The Blossoms: Characters and Relationships
Rose arrives in Meadow Falls with a chip on her shoulder and paint on her clothes—a walking embodiment of New York’s artistic chaos. Her character development throughout the novel is subtle but profound. She begins as someone whose identity is entirely wrapped up in her art and her city origins, but as she falls for Hart, we watch her bloom and eventually question everything she thinks she knows about love and authenticity.
Hart Hargrove is a fascinating protagonist—beautiful, gentle, and obsessed with the garden his family has tended for generations. His twin sister Heather serves as his foil—chaotic, self-destructive, and harboring resentments that become clearer as the story progresses. Their dynamic reflects the duality at the core of the novel: the tension between order and chaos, between nurturing something and letting it grow wild.
The supporting cast includes:
- Lowell Chamberlain, Rose’s awkward new friend whose transformation becomes one of the novel’s most disturbing elements
- Mr. Davis, an elderly hospice patient who knows more about the Hargroves than he initially lets on
- Jim Pauly, Rose’s father, a struggling writer who moved them to Connecticut to inherit his father’s house
What makes Moldavsky’s characters compelling is how they each become entangled in the garden’s dark influence, some knowingly and others as unwitting victims.
The Thorns: Themes and Darkness
At its heart, Of Earthly Delights explores several interconnected themes:
- The price of desire: Every wish granted by the garden extracts a cost from the wisher—a metaphor for how getting what we want often requires sacrifice.
- The nature of love versus obsession: Hart’s desperate attempts to keep Rose alive through repeated wishes raise questions about whether his love is genuine or a manifestation of possession.
- Grief and how we process loss: The contrasting ways Heather and Hart deal with their mother’s death highlight different responses to trauma.
- Free will versus destiny: As we learn that Rose has lived multiple lives with Hart, we’re forced to question whether their love is predestined or manufactured.
The novel’s structure cleverly mirrors these themes. The first half is told from Rose’s perspective, giving us her experience of falling in love with Hart and discovering the garden’s secrets. The second half shifts to Hart’s perspective, revealing his desperate cycle of wishing Rose back to life after each of her deaths—a cycle that grows shorter with each iteration.
This structural choice creates a deeply unsettling effect. Everything we thought we knew about Rose and Hart’s relationship is called into question. Was their connection ever genuine, or was it always the result of Hart’s first wish for love?
The Bloom: Writing Style and Atmosphere
Moldavsky’s prose is accessible yet evocative. She crafts scenes with cinematic clarity, particularly when describing the garden’s various rooms and the sensory experience of being at Hemlock Hill:
“The Wish Garden assaulted her senses with an overstimulation of sight, sound, smell. There was the immediate, intoxicating fragrance of the flowers. There were birds singing, and Rose swore she could also hear the music made by every individual pollinator, joining in the chorus. But it was the sights that got her. The austere, monochrome walls of the hedge maze gave way to a riot of color.”
The author excels at creating tension through small details—the way a flower grows impossibly fast, how grass clings to skin during garden parties, or how a person’s appearance begins to shift after making too many wishes. These moments build a pervasive sense of wrongness that grows throughout the narrative.
The Decay: Critiques and Considerations
While Of Earthly Delights offers a captivating reading experience, it’s not without flaws:
- The first third of the novel moves somewhat slowly, establishing Rose and Hart’s relationship without hinting strongly enough at the supernatural elements to come
- Some secondary characters, particularly Rose’s father, remain underdeveloped despite their potential
- The rules of the Wish Garden sometimes feel inconsistent, particularly regarding which wishes work and which don’t
- The novel’s closing moments leave some philosophical questions about identity and free will unresolved
Additionally, readers looking for a traditional happy ending may find the cyclical nature of the conclusion frustrating. The final scene intentionally mirrors the opening, suggesting that this doomed love story will continue to repeat—a choice that fits thematically but may leave some readers unsatisfied.
The Seeds: Comparisons and Influences
Of Earthly Delights shares DNA with several gothic and romantic traditions:
- The mysterious, possibly sentient garden recalls Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, though with a much darker twist
- The cyclical nature of Hart and Rose’s love evokes the time-loop romance of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
- The atmosphere of wealth, decay, and family secrets pays homage to classics like Rebecca and Wuthering Heights
- The body horror elements of Lowell’s transformation echo the grotesqueries of The Picture of Dorian Gray
Fans of Moldavsky’s previous works, like The Mary Shelley Club and Kill the Boy Band, will recognize her ability to blend dark humor with genuine emotional stakes, though Of Earthly Delights leans more heavily into the gothic romantic tradition than her earlier, more satirical novels.
The Harvest: Final Thoughts
Of Earthly Delights is a haunting meditation on love, loss, and the lengths we’ll go to avoid facing grief. It asks difficult questions: Is love that’s influenced by magic any less real? Is it better to have loved and lost, or to keep reliving that love at the cost of everyone’s freedom? Can we ever truly accept death as natural when we have the means to reverse it?
The novel doesn’t offer easy answers, and that’s its strength. It trusts readers to sit with discomfort and draw their own conclusions about Hart’s choices.
At its best moments, the book captures the intoxicating, all-consuming nature of first love—how it can feel like the most important thing in the world, worth any sacrifice. Moldavsky then skillfully transforms that beautiful feeling into something unsettling, showing how devotion can become distortion when taken to extremes.
Strengths:
- Lush, atmospheric world-building
- Complex examination of love and grief
- Creative concept with the wish-granting garden
- Effective dual-perspective structure
Areas for Improvement:
- Pacing issues in the first third
- Some underdeveloped secondary characters
- Occasional inconsistencies in the garden’s rules
Of Earthly Delights is recommended for readers who enjoy:
- Gothic romance with supernatural elements
- Stories that blur the line between love and obsession
- Narratives that play with time and reality
- Complex moral questions without simple answers
In crafting this dark fable about the consequences of getting exactly what we wish for, Moldavsky has created a garden worth getting lost in—even if, like the characters themselves, you might never find your way back out.
