Reviews with content warning for Death - Magnolia Parks

Reviews tagging 'Death'

Magnolia Parks by Jessa Hastings

9 reviews

amalas_bookstop's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny hopeful lighthearted reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

How is the weather over there, Parks?

I am going to try and explain why this was a 5⭐️ read for me, because this relationship was one of mutual destruction and quite honestly I should hate it, but I don’t.

First off Jessa Hastings writing is absolutely amazing, the way she is able to describe feelings without straight saying them is so buttery smooth to my synapses.” Pine trees of mistakes so tall we can’t see over them and rivers of things we didn't say so wide we can’t get around.” I can hardly believe his is her debut novel, I am going to need to buy more tabs, because I don’t know if I can handle the rest of the series.

Our two main characters are Magnolia “Parks” and BJ Ballentine “Beej”. They have pretty much grown up together. Magnolia literally does not remember a time she did not know him. Throughout the whole story you watch them dance around the topic of why they are no longer together. They have created an amazing family of found friends from boarding school. At times when they did not have parents to count on they could count on each other. My absolute favorite relationship was between Magnolia and her sister Bridget (she is my fav). I loved the way they talked to each other so much. Bridget is pretty much our voice of reason in the book, she is constantly calling out Magnolia and BJ on their dysfunction.

Their relationship is absolutely something I would never want a friend/sister/brother to ever go through. They both use other people as objects when they get upset with each other. BJ sleeps around and Magnolia fake dates. However, I can understand how fear can make you go to a level you never thought you reach. Magnolia is so relatable, I can be the exact same way and say things are “fine” when they are so far from it not only does she lie to everyone in that sense, but she also lies to her self and creates this false narrative of how she really is doing. I hope that as I continue to read the series she is able to grow as a woman, find her self worth, and demand that from others.

This is the first book in a long time where I tabbed and spent time looking up merch. Of course I would love the not romance/romance book. There is just something about the depth of feelings that they have for each other, that is so believable, where they cannot face a reality that they don’t have each other in it.

I would totally recommend this to someone who has experience loss, not just in relationships. I think you would be able to relate to the feeling of not being able to let go. I cannot wait to move on to the next book.

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kcmg710's review against another edition

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emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

This book was like an awful reality TV show, like I hated pretty much every moment of it but COULD NOT, FOR THE LIFE OF ME, STOP READING. Pretty much everything about this book irked me so much, but I could not put it down which is the only reason it got nearly 3 * otherwise it would be a solid 1* or 2* at a push (which is pretty harsh for me).

I also found there were ALOT of typos but I don’t know if that was just my version on the kindle? And some of the sentences genuinely gave me a headache trying to read
eg. “He’s at uni. He never feels like my little brother, just feels like brother.” ———>> Like WATTTT, is that a typo or am I the problem. Is it meant to feel like some deeper sentence with meaning behind it? Because there were many similar to this and it felt like an 8 year old wrote it.

You could kinda tell the author wasn’t British there’s literally a guy called TOM ENGLAND (loved him though, the only one who had an ounce of sense). The characters used a lot of phrases that we wouldn’t actually use. It was abit cringe like watching an American do an awful impression of us

Another strange thing (not totally important but just kinda bugged me) was that there would be in-depth descriptions about each of the characters clothes (because it was a ‘quirk’ of Magnolias) but would always throw the lads in vans or converse? Like Hastings basically gave us the barcodes for each individual item of clothing and then topped off the outfit with a pair of vans or converse. If it was once or twice maybe but not EVERY SINGLE OUTFIT for the lads

Character wise, Bj pretty much won me over within the first few chapters, after that it was a VERY quick descent into the pits of hellll. I hatttttttteeeeeeeee him! Hes a liar, a hypocrite, just a general piece of shit and he constantly contradicted himself. “I’d do anything for that face” but would then proceed to do some of THE most HEINOUS things ever to the girl he’s supposed to love!? Make it make sense, like he has the audacity to play the victim like he doesn’t fuck Magnolia over every chance he gets as if it isn’t all his fault from the get go. “You sullied my name for a Chanel bag?” Like he didn’t sully his own name the instant he cheated!?

Magnolia was very meh to me, and really kinda annoyed me the way she kept going back to BJ but at the same time I kinda felt sorry for her because she put up with so much shit from the lads ( BJ, Chris and Jonah ). They were awful to her and she just accepted it most of the time and cracked on. Could never be me.

The only characters I liked were Tom England 👑, Henry and I guess Magnolias sister was okay too. I liked how Tom and Henry both had Magnolias back no matter what especially Henry. He was always ready to call his brother (Bj) out in defence of magnolia.

Overall, I’d say not a great book and everyone on booktok was saying it gets better in book 2 and onwards but it’s the risk of wasting more time on this ^^^^^ for the small chance it gets better. I’m still undecided whether I will actually carry on with the series.

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theinstabookworm's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Not quite sure I get the hype around this series, but maybe I'll like Daisy and Christian better. I did order the first Daisy Haites book, so we'll see.

Content Warnings

lxndrsn's review against another edition

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emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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sebradley29's review against another edition

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5.0

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thebookwasbetter_22's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

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headinthepages's review against another edition

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

I have absolutely no idea whether I enjoyed this book or not 😂 I found it compelling and easy to read though somehow. It felt like an episode of Made In Chelsea, and I liked reading about the lavish lifestyle but the constant descriptions of what people were wearing got a bit old, though I understand it aided Magnolia’s characterisation.

The “will they won’t they” element did get old and I felt like there was too much to and fro,

though I liked the twist with Paili at the end, and to be fair, Magnolias obsession with details made that twist fit nicely. I do wish she’d ended up with Tom. I don’t like BJ at all and didn’t see what attracted them to each other. I do wish more showing, rather than telling was done when it came to the characters. We get told endlessly that Magnolia & BJ are magnetic and people are obsessed with them but no actual personality traits came through that would make me believe that other than them being conventionally good looking & rich. The rest was taking the author at their word

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lucyrudd's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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toofondofbooks_'s review against another edition

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dark emotional funny lighthearted reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Update: bumping this one up to 5 stars because I haven't stopped thinking about it and it's been a week. ALL I WANNA DO IS READ THE REST OF THE BOOKS AND NOTHING ELSE BUT I don't have money so I have to leave them on my wishlist for now rip

There are a lot of things to like about this romp of a book. The world of high society London complete with a cast of filthy rich 20 somethings and 30 somethings was engaging and compulsively readable. Jessa Hastings has a unique but digestable writing style that makes our main characters feel like they're writing confessionals directly to the audience, so in a way, it felt like my favorite parts of reality TV. I don't mean that in a bad way by any means, I just mean that I liked having a front row seat to all of the drama even though the drama toward the end made me feel exhausted. I do think that this book could've been cut in half and it would've been even better. Still, I annotated and tabbed the hell out of this. There were a lot of quotable moments and moments worth reading and re-reading.

On to Magnolia and BJ themselves - I know they shouldn't be together, you know they shouldn't be together, Jessa Hastings probably knows they shouldn't be together, and yet...you want them to be together. There is no logical reason for me to want them to be happy. Firstly, they both have major growing up to do, and secondly, neither of them are very good people. A bad person doesn't mean a bad character, though. I still enjoyed reading their antics and sometimes BJ, even at his worst, was able to squeeze my heart in just the right way, damn him, stupid goblin boy.

I have some slight issues here and there that I can't get into without spoilers, but I overall loved this one and can't wait to read the rest of them.

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