CW Room

Author: Jessa Hastings

The Magnolia Parks Series is a seven book self-published series written by Jessa Hastings about a group of young adult british socialites navigating fame, relationships and family drama.

The books are primarily from Magnolia and BJ’s standpoint, where they focus on their own relationship along with their relationships with immediate family and their childhood friend group.

Along with the 3 Magnolia books out so far, Daisy Haites currently holds 2 books from the perspective of herself, her gang lord older brother and her love interest Christian who happens to be one of Magnolia’s closest friends.

Five of the seven book series are currently out and are read in chronological order as follows: Magnolia Parks, Daisy Haites, Magnolia Parks: The Long Way Home, Daisy Haites: The Great Undoing, Magnolia Parks: Into the Dark.

You can technically read the Magnolia Parks books on their own without the Daisy Haites books and vice versa, but you will miss a couple of details and some morsels of context.

Jessa Hastings, overtime, seems to have learned to distinguish between the storylines in her main characters’ lives from one another. This means that as the books progress, you are more likely to miss details if you skip any of the books.

Language and Writing

In any case, reading these books is not difficult from a readability perspective. The style is informal, almost enough to sound like a diary but comes off as more of an interview or a Vlog.

As the books are told from the first person perspective of the characters, this works well enough. Depending on the reader, however, you may find that the writing is much too informal and often you may find yourself losing the immersive qualities of good writing that this book may lack.

That said, the language used by these characters is very modern, especially in more recent books. The characters are clearly online as they use expressions similar to those you find online. In fact, every character in here is very ‘online’ heavy and are almost satirically speaking as though twitter is on the watch.

The dialect is primarily British even though the writer is from South California. The writing can be taken as true British dialect if you are not aware of this tidbit of information about Jessa, and that’s how I read it.

Plot and Progression

The downfall of these books is just how unrealistic and drawn out they all are for seemingly no explainable reason. Much of the plot is repetitive and is one of those plots where the only way it could be this repetitive is if they are deliberately using the communication skills of a toddler.

The main characters BJ and Magnolia refuse to relinquish their pride and have an open and honest conversation like the adults they claim to be. This is somewhat explained away in the second Magnolia book, but at that point you’re on the third book and have read Magnolia’s story twice already.

I say that because the first Daisy Haites book is significantly based off the first Magnolia Parks book timeline. While Daisy shows up exactly twice for one minute appearances in the first Magnolia book and says a cumulative of maybe five words in total during these appearances, the first Daisy book is still somehow centered around Magnolia and what she’s up to with her friends.

This is because Chrsitian, Daisy’s main love interest, plays a main part in the Daisy series. Therefore, not only is he hanging out with Magnolia, but Daisy can’t seem to stop talking about her as well.

Trouble is, you never learn any new information because the events are recycled from the first book, and nothing new is added. Christian only sees his friends in outings that already happened in the first book. They only have the same conversations and nothing more. Daisy only has thoughts about the details she knows about Christian, and we know more about Christian in that book than she does.

You get it, the Daisy books are recycled and so are the Magnolia plot lines. That said, the second Daisy book, The Great Undoing, showed marginal improvement with Daisy developing a thought process apart from Magnolia and Christian. This does not make up for the repetition but it provides relief that you can equate to the tiny gasps of air you mange to gulp in in between water splashes while drowning.

That said, Magnolia was integrated into Daisy’s story for a reason that would be considered a spoiler and that managed to give Daisy a concrete reason to be thinking of Magnolia so much.

Finally, the most recent Magnolia Parks book, Into the Dark, came out in 2023. Due to how the previous Magnolia book ended, the plot of this book broke away from the repetitive hamster wheel that is the life of these socialites and allowed for new dimensions of these characters to be explored.

Magnolia Parks: Into the Dark was the best book in the series by far, earning a three star rating from me and giving me some hopes for the next Daisy book.

Should You Read the Magnolia Parks Series?

I found myself reading this book after reading a couple of autobiographies and a bad thriller. I was craving a romance book with a new element to it that was not quite as common as usual romance books out there.

I landed on Magnolia Parks when I learned it was a ‘not-your-typical’ ‘Gossip Girl’ book with rich, famous young adults whose primary kryptonite is each other. After reading the first book, I was curious about how Daisy Haites fits into the story (turns out she didn’t really – not in her first book anyway.)

Afterwards, I kept reading because I rather hoped it could only get better. As it is now, I am aware that I’ve spent what might equate to a month and a half reading books that I have little to no respect for.

I was entertained about a third of the time, and for the rest of it I was fed up enough to skim and skip some of the longer repetitive inner monologues.

Should you read the Magnolia Parks series? If you’re looking for a no spice, guilty pleasure, reality show adjacent book, this book might be for you. Start out and let me know how you feel.

If you are looking for a typical romance book where you can immerse yourself and connect to the characters and their stories, you may have better luck elsewhere. In any case, you can always get a free sample on the kindle store and see how you feel.

If you enjoyed this blog and want to read more, find my book blogs here. I also write blogs about being in my 20s, food blogs and travel blogs. I also write fictional short stories.

Thanks for reading 🙂