Magnolia Parks by Jessa Hastings (Series)

This series is a fascinating look at the intricacies of a specific circle of upper-crust British socialities: both the incredibly wealthy and oblivious and a particular stripe of "gang lord" art thieves involved in a seedier underbelly. I loved the contrast and overlap between each respective arc: highly glamorous, dramatic, and angsty at all times. It's a hard series to describe, mostly because the descriptor is right: it is a universe, and that comes with a lot of pros and cons. For me, it was a pro to be so wholly absorbed into a separate sphere, but it does require that you buy into the characters and the drama pretty quickly or else lose interest, because it breaks a lot of narrative rules — so it may or may not be for you.

The Books & How I Read Them

• Magnolia Parks (Magnolia no. 1)
• Daisy Haites (Daisy no. 1)
• The Long Way Home (Magnolia no. 2)
• The Great Undoing (Daisy no. 2)
• Into the Dark (Magnolia no. 3)

First, I'll talk about the Magnolia Parks books themselves (books one, three, and five.) Then, I'll go into Daisy Haites (books two and four) and how that storyline enriches and complicates the other.

MAGNOLIA PARKS

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?

PLOT

The book series starts with the narration of Magnolia Parks in the quintessential first book, the "it girl" involved in a will-they-won't-they best friendship/relationship with her first love, BJ, who cheated on her and now can't quite seem to earn her forgiveness. Still, they're a mess. They owe everything to each other; they sleep in the same bed but don't sleep together, and are constantly erupting into a fight. It's an absolute disaster.

The first book begins essentially when Magnolia gets jealous at a club and runs into an old crush of hers, Tom England. He's just gotten out of a relationship, and the two decide to fake-date to finally put BJ in his place (and benefit them both socially.) Naturally, Magnolia ends up in a complicated love triangle of sorts.

CHARACTERS

You might hate Magnolia, which is fair. She's a lot, but she's also aware that she's a lot. The series is heavy-handed about really beating it into you that everyone either wants to be her or be with her, and she is the sun around which this solar system orbits. I personally loved her because she was majorly flawed but very sympathetic.

She's one of the few "arrogant heiress" archetypes I've actually adored, largely because she's unapologetic about it but also pretty kind still. She's spoiled and demanding, but not selfish (at least, consciously so; when she is, she's unaware), so her classicism and quirks come across as charming. Their jobs do not matter in this series; they're largely formalities and nepotism. Their parents are largely uninvolved.

If anything, I thought BJ was a brat, but a lot of his complicated backstory actually emerges in the later books and makes you see him in an entirely new light.

One of the cool parts about this universe is that it's so sprawling, with Hastings selectively feeding you information based on which characters you're focused on, that it ends up being a pretty thoughtful and interesting commentary on how you genuinely never know anyone else's history or context even as you see it unfold. I'm aware that sounds incredibly cliché, but it was actually enormously complicated and cool to see the same event unravel around different people and constantly have a new (equally engrossing) experience with that plot point based on whatever new layer Hastings has introduced since you saw it last.

Normally, I find that sort of repetition a sloppy-feeling money grab in a book (give us the same story five times, okay!), but here, it's deployed in such a useful, true-to-life way that means I could book club the storylines in this for forever.

RELATIONSHIPS

I have this riff about how friends-to-lovers-to-exes-to-lovers (or whatever associated murkiness a book or TV show has) is really only possible in an ensemble cast because each character has to remain part of the cast. Otherwise, there are too many names for a reader or watcher to plausibly keep track of. The necessity automatically creates this cloud of magnetism though, this idea that people are with each other still because of a secret, hidden allure that will ensure everything shakes out okay.

In reality, the big consequence is that you will cease to be in each others' lives at all. I wrote about this in a personal essay on dating that I somewhat regret being published online and thus will never link to, but I do think the appeal of Magnolia Parks, for example, is that they will always remain in proximity to each other. And Chekhov's gun created a nice little thrill. If you named someone as part of the cast, they'd have to pop up again.

I do think the relationship between Magnolia and BJ was compelling to me—and grabbed me, despite the many, many reasons they should maybe not be together. Maybe it made them weak that they'd fall victim to each others' gravity and then blow up at each other time and time again. The toxicity wasn't in them being repetitive to each other or not knowing what they wanted; it was more so in them being mean to each other. But hey, it made it fun to read. The peculiarity of their relationship was so stunning because they could not imagine an alternative outside the parameters of closeness; even when wrecked, they would be friends or lovers or something else entirely.

The whole point and frustration of the book — that will either win you over or make you throw it against the wall — is that it is cyclical and repetitive, and it really is based around this fundamental question of whether you can replicate love. And then, if every type of love is different based on the person and connections involved, whether you can stomach losing one type or flavor of love entirely if you choose someone else (and whether you can live without it.) The core of the book is surprisingly existentially powerful.

I think Magnolia Parks as a book was strongest during these primally self-aware moments that Magnolia would get when musing about their relationship together. The quotes were really so clear and startling to me, so underlineable, that I understood why this of all books got such a following. I love the feeling of a writer articulating something powerful you've never been able to put into words before, and I think the disaster of the romance and the plot surrounding it gave her the correct avenue to do so, regardless of whether or not the story grabs you.

“Everything wonderful, everything magical, everything painful, everything beautiful and spectacular and wretched and defining that has happened to me happened with him. And I hate him for that.”

And here's where it won me over: it gets deep into shades of gray, with questions about what happens when you want people in your life but don't have a neat label for them. It aligns with many of my favorite love stories (*if you call them love stories) like Jamie and Charlotte from A Study in Charlotte or Eva and Gideon from Bared to You (although that's a poor example because that's a cut-and-dried romance.) Either way, I love the intricacies of characterization between two people who are "associated" but horribly messy, and I thought Jessa Hasting's reflections on the matter were absolutely phenomenal.

“The problem with me and Parks is, I think we love each other more than ourselves. Again, that sounds romantic but it’s not— Because if she loved herself more than she loves me, she’d have fucked off years ago.”

Sure, the couple involved could be stupid and repetitive and wild, but their reasoning made total sense throughout even when you wanted to shake them. So the drama was bubbly and indulgent, but the deeper analyses of human connection and meaning and all that jazz really hit me hard.

WRITING

The voice is very telling-heavy and conversational, which took me a good bit to get into. I picked up the first book Magnolia Parks and wasn't in the mood. Although Jessa Hastings does an incredible job showing the flaws and biases in each characters' narrations when looking at another—ex: when Daisy's narrating, you see exactly how oblivious and painfully naive Magnolia can be about the illegal nature of the Haites' work—each voice is very similar, with a specific style of punctuation and sentence construction that will either hook you as distinctive or drive you up a wall.

Once I got used to it, I did find it addictive. And as I noted, I loved how precise and singular each musing could be about how messy and entangled their lives were, and I thought that was the major selling point of the book for me. I would reread, without a doubt.

PACING

I overall think each book is too long, especially in Magnolia's series, as you will find the circling that she and BJ do to be repetitive. Still, I loved. So I don't care; more time in this story universe was a good thing for me.

This is a polarizing book you'll love or loathe; personal taste and mileage will vary, as you can read it across any number of interpretations (my favorite type of read: a complex high-low book that can meet you where you want it to.)

OVERALL

Basically, Magnolia Parks has a cult following across the Internet. It's frothy and entertaining, a deep-dive into the complex will-they-won't-they relationship of two British socialities and their surrounding (possibly unhealthily codependent) friend group. It feels more involved than most private-jets-and-champagne reads, largely because the feelings in it are so big and complicated. It's my favorite type of high-low read: one you can read for sheer escapism, but one you could also analyze and book club on a deeper level, and undoubtedly come away each time with a different experience or sentiment.

DAISY HAITES

All 20 year old Daisy Haites has ever wanted is a normal life, but it’s just not on the cards for her. Raised by her older brother Julian since their parents were murdered in front of them 12 years ago, Daisy hasn’t ever lived beyond the watchful gaze of her gang lord brother. But Julian’s line of work means that Daisy’s life is...complicated. And things don’t become any less complex when she falls hard for Christian Hemmes, the beautiful and emotionally unavailable boy she’s been involved with for the last few months, who also happens to be one of the few men in London who doesn’t answer to Julian. Christian’s life is no walk in the park either, being in love with his best friend’s girlfriend and all… He’s happy enough to use Daisy to throw off the scent of his true affections, that is until she starts to infiltrate those too.

As their romance blossoms into something neither were anticipating, Daisy, Christian, and Julian each have to come to terms with the fact that in this life everything comes at a price. As their relationships intersect and tangle, they all learn that sometimes life’s most worthwhile pursuits can only be paid in blood.

PLOT

The Haites family is adjacent to Magnolia Parks and all her drama. Parks is briefly involved with Julian, Daisy's older brother, and is a frequent object of conversation; she was also involved with (you'll notice a pattern here) Christian, Daisy's current love interest. You definitely need a diagram to keep up with how everyone in this universe is connected to each other and relevant, but it's really not that hard to follow once you're open to it.

Daisy Haites and The Great Undoing (books two and four of the Magnolia Parks universe) can be read in order or in a bundle. Thanks to library holds, I read Daisy Haites after reading all of Magnolia's storylines, and that added a new layer to my reading experience.

This storyline and sequence of narrators has significantly more of a plot than the other one, largely because it focuses on the art thieves and their various crimes (fun!) and dramas. When reading this part of the series, you'll wonder how Magnolia can be so self-absorbed and naïve, but also respect her gumption.

Daisy Haites bounces between Daisy, Christian, and Julian as narrators, and each have a lot to offer. I preferred this section of the series because of Daisy's relatable intensity and the sheer amount of drama unfolding as part of the plot. Magnolia's arcs are much more interior, character-related, and emotional; Daisy's can still be angsty and romantic and devastating, but have more tangible life-or-death stakes that are exciting to follow as they unfold. Plus, information that the Haites has casts such interesting shadows on the reveals we've just learned as part of Magnolia's storyline and again, show that sort of butterfly effect: that one person's actions or lack of knowledge have a gigantic ripple effect because of two hundred relevant developments unfolding simultaneously. Luck, timing, chaos.

CHARACTERS

Daisy and Julian are orphans. They saw their parents get murdered in front of them on a beach when they were little. Since then, Julian's assumed control of his family's crime empire—and is incredibly good at it. He rules with fear and intimidation, and the siblings are more important to each other than anybody else.

Daisy has rules for Julian, like no guns at the dinner table and no crimes involving children. She's surrounded by a band of loyal "brothers" and a bodyguard trained to get her out if anything goes South. She's studying medicine, both because academics are her joyful escape and passion (she's brilliant) and occasionally because her brother's guys need medical care they can't risk going to a hospital for.

Both of them are passionate and curious about art, traumatized by their parents' deaths, have complicated romantic lives thanks to their chosen profession. If you love Mafia-type stories with family rivalries, legacies, and loyalties, you'll likely love the calculations they make throughout the Daisy Haites books to stay afloat.

RELATIONSHIPS

Again, the Magnolia Parks books are almost fun to read largely because nobody ever really disappears. For that reason, all the hookups, pairings, and exes are all just still around—and the swaps and drama make it a pretty incestuous social circle.

Daisy has her first love, Romeo, who disappeared after Daisy nearly died and their families forced them apart for her protection. He's reappeared to win her over, but she still feels somewhat betrayed. They're both associated from the get-go.

Daisy's also sleeping with Christian, a surly ex of Magnolia's from an adjacent crime family. He gets what she's dealing with, has not been part of Julian's inner circle before now, and has a score of insecurities too that sometimes make them clash.

And then there's the detective, who flirts with Daisy to try to get dirt on her brother. Naturally, she's always sent to run interference.

As in the Magnolia Parks books, these gals know how to juggle multiple men, making the romance arcs chaotic. Sure, they could be solved with a simple commitment conversation with (1) other person, but where's the fun in that? This series lives for shades of gray, miscommunication, and people being important to each other without much consideration for labels—which makes the drama a mess and each musing so. good.

WRITING

Daisy's more level-headed than Magnolia but still has her issues, and much of the same voice notes apply. Many of the narrators speak in this clipped, sentence-fragment way that reveals Jessa Hasting's universal voice. It's easy to speed through but also easy to sink into, which works well for this sort of narrative.

PACING

The pacing was much better in Daisy Haites because there was more of a plot. It rarely dragged for me, but there were multiple arcs and beats I couldn't wait to see executed, from heists to fights to people bleeding out on the floors in the middle of the night. I ripped through both of these books so quickly and absolutely loved them, but still felt like there was enough time and growth built in to really get a feel for the connections between each character.

OVERALL

I'm definitely going to get repetitive, but I just devoured Magnolia Parks and have so much to talk about re: this series and how it's constructed. It really does feel different from anything out there, and there are plenty of creative risks that pay off. Jessa Hastings gives a lot of credit to the reader in expecting you to absorb a fully-fleshed-out social circle and all its backstory without much pause to register names or connections; keep up or get out, you know?

For that reason, I had a rip-roaringly fun time reading and really felt the gravity of each romantic connection, but could also see it not being for some readers who may find it too complicated, trivial, or obsessive for these characters to be constantly running in circles around each other. Daisy Haites might assuage those concerns some and provide some much-needed balance and groundedness to the series; if you find Magnolia's concerns too out of touch ("just get over the boy already"), seeing the underbelly of life-or-death can raise the stakes.

And for this half of the series, the trauma, sibling relationship, and romances are seriously too good. Haters will say everyone in this series is toxic and out of touch. They're not wrong but I love 'em anyway and will undoubtedly inhale the rest of it.

Much more to talk about!

Notes from Both Halves of the Series

• Magnolia's grandmother is so funny, and the series is full of amusing one-liners.
• Magnolia has this Patrick Bateman-style way of identifying and narrating each person's clothing, which is so baked into her persona (and actually very impressive.)
• I loved the way that Jessa Hastings layered in information. Each character or narrator might reference something very casually or naturally, so it really does feel like they've known everyone in the book forever; later, when the reader is finally aware of a specific backstory (say, in book 3), you'll realize that the character's known that for much longer than you have and you just weren't privy to the information. That feels really realistic and helps contribute to this theme of never fully knowing the context of everyone else's drama.
• I read Daisy Haites as an eBook so did not register that there are a ton (a TON) of footnotes, which may or may not be your thing.
• I appreciated that different historical issues came up for characters throughout the series and highlighted their flaws. Like for example, Magnolia losing interest in food at one point, and BJ's worry about not pushing her over the edge in her concern. It wasn't thrown in there just for shock value or intensity, but was a character arc that made total sense within the rest of the constellation of values and patterns that had already been established.
• I generally don't veer towards audiobooks, but did listen to Daisy Haites partly on audio. Loved the accents and appreciated the narration—as I am very picky.