XOXO, Magnolia Parks
How many men can love one woman in a lifetime
Hi friends! Welcome back to another deep dive into a BookTok favorite. This week, we’re tackling Magnolia Parks by Jessa Hastings. Much like Lucy Score’s Knockemout series, these books have distinctive covers that one can’t help but notice. Unlike Lucy Score, I’ve primarily seen and heard about these books on my TikTok FYP as opposed to in bookstores, although I’ve occasionally seen them on shelves. And once I finally picked one up, my expectations for what this series was were proven wrong, pretty quickly! So let’s dive in.
How’s the Weather? Magnolia Parks 101
The Magnolia Parks series currently consists of five books. The first in the series, Magnolia Parks, was indie published in July 2021 by Jessa Hastings, an Australian living in California. The series was acquired by Dutton and re-published (with much more mainstream-looking covers) in 2023.
I wouldn’t categorize the series as romance, since none of the books ends with a happily ever after. They’re something closer to melodrama, with a sweeping cast of rich, messy characters galavanting about in London (and occasionally New York). The books alternate perspectives - book one is about the aforementioned Magnolia Parks and her on again, off again love, BJ Ballentine. Book two is about Daisy Haites, her brother Julien (a “gang lord”), and her situationship with Christian (another mafia-adjacent rich boy who also owns nightclubs). The books then alternate, with timelines that overlap, between the Magnolia and BJ threads and the Daisy and Christian and Julien threads of the story. There are plans for at least a sixth book in the series, although Hastings has said she isn’t sure when it will be written.
Altogether, the series has 500,000 ratings on Goodreads (a lot, but not as many as I might’ve thought considering how much I’ve seen people talk about these books). Goodreads’ algorithm comps these as similar to Chloe Walsh’s Boys of Tommen Series (which conveniently is next on my list of series to explore).
The books are polarizing, with a pretty wild review distribution curve:
A representative five-star review:
“i ate this up like it was my last meal and i was severely malnourished. these characters are insufferable, selfish, and beyond toxic. i love them with my entire heart.” - Chloe
A representative one-star review:
“dnf at 51% i want to throat punch every character in this book.” - Gurman
And my favorite review:
cecily von ziegesar and anna todd got really drunk and said "what if we wrote a sally rooney book" -Goodreads user @chan you are a poet and a scholar.
The series’ distinctive covers were painted by artist Emmy Lawless - Hastings has a knack for branding and has recently launched House of Hastings, a sort of fan community/publishing imprint/merch store.
Check out their International Women’s Day post highlighting the characters of the Magnolia Parks universe:
You Know You Love Me
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So, you’re probably wondering - what ARE these books? I know I was. Before this week, all I knew was that these books are many readers’ exceptions to the no cheating rule in romance. When the first book opens, we meet BJ and Magnolia, who have been broken up for the past three years since BJ cheated on her. Their lives are still deeply emotionally enmeshed and large parts of both of them still believe they’ll end up together, even if they haven’t found a way to forgive each other yet. Their relationship involves a toxic cycle of Magnolia getting new boyfriends to distract herself from the fact that BJ is having frankly shocking amounts of casual sex with Miu Miu models. Along with their group of rich boarding school friends (called the Full Box Set by the tabloids), the reader is left wondering - can they ever work it out, or are they doomed to hurt each other forever?
The best way I can describe the vibe of these books is Gossip Girl meets Clueless, with a hint of Bridget Jones. And some of them are in the mafia (why not?).
Magnolia is the biracial daughter of a music producer and a Russian handbag designer with a savant-like ability to identify designer clothing (a Cher Horowitz for the 2020s). She’s 23, with a sporadic job as a society editor at Tatler. BJ Ballentine is an Instagram model and fuckboy about town. Neither of them has ever had to worry about money in their lives. Their found family consists of friends from boarding school, trauma bonded after being separated from their actual families at such a young age.
The plot of this first book is propelled by the fact that almost every man in Magnolia’s orbit is in love with her. Why? Apparently because she has Bambi eyes that are impossible to say no to (this is textual). So when she sees BJ getting a lap dance from another woman at a club, she stumbles into the arms of Tom England, a billionaire slash pilot slash friend of the royal family. At first, they agree to a sort of fake dating arrangement, but they eventually start to fall for each other. Will Magnolia take BJ back, will she finally leave him for good and ride off into the sunset with Tom England, will she get back together with Christian, her rebound after BJ (and BJ’s best friend) who has never really gotten over her? Or is there a secret fourth option?
Hastings is a surprisingly lyrical writer who has a dab hand with romantic prose - the sweeping sentimentality of these books and their focus on star-crossed lovers seems to be a large part of their appeal. The series’ tagline, how many loves do you get in a lifetime, is a central point of contemplation for all of the characters. So while I wouldn’t call these books romances, they have moments of over the top swoon:
“I still love you, say the turned-down edges of his perfect mouth. Fairly top heavy, like somehow it always manages to get stung by bees. Once upon a time, he balanced my whole heart atop that lip.”
The above is literally on page 2.
“Because her eyes right now, all raw and weighed down the same way mine are, they anchor us to the seabed of whatever the fuck we are and were and will be. And I wonder what love is like for other people…Is love for everyone wordless exchanges and a million memories that fuck you up to the bone?
Unsurprisingly, these books lend themselves to a lot of dramatic edits using Gracie Abrams songs:
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If I were an editor in the year of our lord 2025, I might start asking authors which Gracie Abrams song they think fits the mood of their book, since clearly this is an important component of viral success on BookTok at the moment.
I found the racial politics of this book extremely confusing, so I sought out some alternative sources. Magnolia is mixed race (as is Hastings herself), but her dad is Black. He’s a music producer who works with Kendrick Lamar and other rap artists and has a moment of violence with Magnolia in the book. Because all of the characters are so rich, race is never really addressed - but in light of the Meghan Markle of it all, I do think there would be issues of racism even (especially?) at the highest levels of wealth that aren’t addressed here. Just wanted to flag. Here are a few TikTok and YouTube responses specifically to Hasting’s writing about race:
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And here’s a great negative review that I found fascinating because it’s a British woman who switches to an American accent when she imitates the people who liked this book (and calls out the fact that the author isn’t British):
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Who is Daisy Haites?
Daisy Haites, heroine of the second and fourth books in the series, is a mirror image of Magnolia. She’s the sister of Julien, a “gang lord.” She’s a brilliant medical student. She had a tempestuous relationship with her first love, Romeo, and they can’t quite seem to actually quit each other. Her Tom England figure is Christian Hemmes, BJ’s best friend and a prominent character in the first book. But Daisy actually falls in love with Christian.
I do find the structure of this series, which alternates between Magnolia centric stories and Daisy centric stories, really interesting and original. Daisy mostly doesn’t give paragraph long descriptions of people’s outfits, but her voice is characterized by an excessive use of footnotes. Daisy is fed up with the fact that every man falls in love with Magnolia, and honestly, who could blame her. Look, a man read this one! (Warning, possible spoilers in this video):
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So, in conclusion - these books were not what I expected to them to be, nor were they romances, but I had a good time reading them and might finish this series - Hastings is really good at keeping you guessing at which characters will end up together and she has a really fresh and unique voice. Plus, I did read every single book in the Gossip Girl series as a teen. Your mileage may vary with this one, but I think it’s a fascinating peek into the types of books outside of mainstream romance that are breaking out on BookTok these days.
What’s Next?
While the Magnolia Parks series isn’t yet finished, Hastings has a new book releasing on April 1 that is not part of the series. The Conditions of Will is a family drama set in South Carolina. The next Magnolia Parks book is due to be a Daisy book, but no release date has been set.
Imaginary Celebrity Book Club
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This is obviously a real book club, but look at Reese trying to make a BookTok-style influencer video! Fascinating. I also think watching Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon try to do this highlights just how much of a skill this really is. If you watch too many TikToks, you can sometimes start to think anyone could talk to camera about the books they’ve read this week, but it’s hard!
In other real celebrity book club news, Oprah announced a new book club pick (increasingly few and far between). The Tell by Amy Griffin is a memoir about a successful woman who has been running from a dark secret in her past and about healing from trauma. The audience for Oprah’s book club and BookTok are quite different, but we’ll see if this one gets any BookTok pickup. Chanel Miller’s (who provides a blurb for this book) memoir is very popular on BookTok, so I could see a world where this has broad appeal.
Have you read Magnolia Parks? What did you think? And are there any other popular series you’re longing for an explainer on? Let me know. XOXO
I'm not committing multi-book series reading time without a guarantee of multiple HEAs--but if the producers of Gossip Girl want to make this for Netflix I would watch the shit out of it.
These are definitely in my list so thanks for the awesome summary!