Magnolia Parks by Jessa Hastings
Published: August 8, 2023
Genre: Romance
Audience: Adult
Setting: London
Content Warnings: Alcohol, Assault, Cheating, Drugs, Emotional Abuse, Misogyny, Toxic Relationship, Violence
Summary (From Amazon): “How many loves do you get in a lifetime?”
She is a beautiful, affluent, self-involved, and mildly neurotic London socialite. He is Britain’s most photographed bad boy who broke her heart.
Magnolia Parks and BJ Ballentine are meant to be, and everyone knows it.
She dates other people to keep him at bay; he sleeps with other girls to get back at her for it. But at the end of every sad endeavor to get over one another, it’s still each other they crawl back to.
But now their dysfunction is catching up with them, pulling at their seams and fraying the world they’ve built; a world where neither has ever let the other go completely.
As the cracks start to show and secrets begin to surface, Magnolia and BJ are finally forced to face the formidable question they’ve been avoiding all their lives: How many loves do you really get in a lifetime?
Review: I was not sure what I was getting myself into with this story. I have seen a lot of great talk about this series on social media. The story is told from Magnolia Parks and BJ Ballentine's point of view. Magnolia Parks and BJ Ballentine have been in love with each other since they were children. Magnolia is a London socialite with a gift for identifying what a person is wearing just by looking at them, a frequent shopper at Gucci and constantly in the limelight. BJ is known as a bad boy, overdoses on drugs, and sleeps around. But, the love of his life is apparently Magnolia, fondly referred to as "Parks". Magnolia and BJ are not together, but consistently have sleepovers and interactions which would lead you to believe they were. Then Magnolia catches BJ doing something that guts her and she flees. Magnolia is always running back to BJ and letting
him back into her life because she is still hopelessly in love with him and can't let him go. Magnolia is hurting BJ, and BJ is hurting Magnolia. The characters have no remorse for their actions and continue to do the same thing over and over. They are both unable to see how their actions are hurting the other and they are unwilling to change their behavior. While this story is mainly about the situationship between Magnolia and BJ we have a lot of characters in their family/ friend group. Keeping the characters straight was difficult, lines are being crossed, hook ups happening here and there. Remembering siblings and which characters are on Magnolia's side or BJ's side. This story was not a lovey romance by any means and the ending may shock you. There are a total of five books in this Magnolia Parks Universe, the author intends for readers to read them in the order they have been published.
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