Magnolia Parks by Jessa Hastings
Genre: Romance
Blurb (on back of book):
She is a beautiful, affluent, self-involved and mildly neurotic London socialite. He is Britain's most photographed bad-boy lothario who broke her heart. But Magnolia Parks and BJ Ballentine are meant to be, and everyone knows it. They're in the stars... just suspended in a strange kind of love that looks like hurting each other a lot of the time: 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 their every sad endeavour to get over one another, it's still each other they crawl back to. But their dysfunction is catching up with them, pulling at their seams and fraying the world they've built; a world where neither has to 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?
MY OPINION: **
I've heard from everyone and their mother how toxic this book is and it's been on my list for a while. It's definitely not a typical romance novel, which was interesting, but overall the sheer toxicity and outlandishness of this book landed me at a solid two star rating in the end.
I don't know how to feel about this. This definitely was not romanticizing a toxic relationship but at the same time it kind of was? It's so hard to explain. The book has basically zero plot. It's literally just about these two people who are clearly wrong for each other going back to each other over and over again after they keep breaking each other's hearts.
They were childhood friends to lovers until the guy, BJ, cheated on Magnolia and basically ruined their entire relationship. She considers him the "great love" of her life but he clearly is not?? BJ was arguably one of the worst characters I've ever read in a book. He plays with Magnolia's feelings and strings her along, claiming he's in love with her and no one else, all while sleeping with every single breathing female human being in sight. It was ridiculous.
Magnolia was no better. She serial dates various other men without feeling anything real for them, stringing them along and making them fall in love with her all while sleeping in the same bed as BJ. Yes, they have "sleepovers" every single night together (and that's all they do: sleep). It was devastating what she did to Tom England and even to Christian Hemmes, who was apparently some gang lord (??) that we never learned anything more about. Everything in this book was so ridiculous I was laughing at points from the sheer absurdity of the prose.
Going back to the writing style, it's definitely something unique. It's very verbose, trying to sound flowery and whimsical but reading more as trite and confused. It was dreary to go through these long passages about how much BJ and Magnolia apparently love each other but how they can't be together but that one day they will except they won't. This reads like something I would have written in my melodramatic era when I was like fourteen years old. It was ridiculous.
Also, not a single one of these characters had a personality. I could not TELL you who the hell the friends were. We literally see them as characters either for or against Parks and BJ getting together and it was like why are you here?? WHO ARE YOU?? I had to search up who everyone was multiple times just to orient myself and remember what their one shining personality trait was supposed to be. We had Christian the gang lord (apparently), Jonah??, Paili??, Perry??, like who are these people??? And Henry, supposedly Parks's best friend and earliest friend and yet we see him talk to her maybe one time and it was through a text message.
Justice for Tom England. That was a real man. He deserved so much better. He was robbed and he was stepped on and even though he's fictional, I just know he was too hot to be dealing with all the trauma Parks put him through.
She had the personality of a stick and three men are fighting to the death over her so um. Literally all she did was talk about the exact clothes/style/brand that every single character was wearing and I skipped over those paragraphs because I simply did not care about Gucci and whatnot.
This was a ridiculous book. I don't know what I was reading. That all being said, I immediately downloaded the second book, which is apparently about a whole different set of characters, despite the fact that this one ends on a (boring) cliffhanger for Parks and BJ. If I could take a shot for the amount of times they said "I'm done forever" and "he broke my heart for the last time" and then decided to run back into each other's arms, I would be blacked out. Like this was so ridiculous I was laughing but at the same time, I kept clicking next page so I don't know. Take of that what you will. If you ever had a Wattpad phase, this is the one for you.
Main Character: Magnolia Parks, BJ Ballentine
Sidekick(s): Henry, Jonah, Perry, friends, etc
Villain(s): Cheating, toxicity, etc
Romance Elements: This book was centered on a romance storyline (this is NOT a fun rom-com).
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