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A review by laura_kat
Magnolia Parks by Jessa Hastings
emotional
funny
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
How many loves do you get in a lifetime?
I have never read a book that has made me laugh, cry and giggle quite like this one did. You just simply feel all the characters' feelings so deeply it hurts yourself a little bit.
There are simply too many great quotes to choose from, but I'll give you a few:
1) Leaving him would always involve pain, an act of violence, like ripping my heart from my own chest, leaving it on a bench somewhere, hoping for the best until I could make it to a hospital and be patched up, but I don't think you can live too long with your heart outside of your chest. (Magnolia)
2) I start to wonder how many people in your lifetime do you get to love how I love her? Can't be that many. How many loves do you get? Tell me it's two. Fuck. Please, tell me it's two. Jo pulls me backwards and away from her and I think the ties that bind us, I think I hear them snap. It's not two. (BJ)
3) Can you die from a broken heart, do you know? And if I did and they cut me wide open, would I bleed loving him? When they lift my heart out of my chest cavity to weigh it, does it weigh the same as his top lip? Is his name carved into my third rib to the left? Bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. He's killing me. Loving him is killing me too, and I'm afraid because how many loves really, do you get in a lifetime? How many chances do you give it before you let it go? (Magnolia)
4) Of course we're going to work, even if I'm a round peg and he's a square hole - I don't care, I'll shave down the edges of myself to keep him. I'd do anything for him. (Magnolia)
5) I know that some love is beautiful, and some is freeing, some unravels you, some love poisons you, some blinds you, some betters you, and some loves break you in invisible ways that no one else knows about until you have to stand up and the weight of your love crushes your bones. (Magnolia)
6) Someone could have hit me in the stomach with a pole. Her mouth twitches and the glassiness of her eyes spills over a little. Fucks me up worse than it does her because she can't see her own face when she's crying but I can. Those fucking emerald eyes. I'd sell my liver on the black market to stop her from crying, sell everything I own, rip my heart out of my own chest - but I think I've already done that. (BJ)
7) Is this what I've been doing to her all these years? Is this how her chest feels? Because it feels like I've got carpet burn inside my chest. This weird slow sinking like my ribs are collapsing in on themselves and that maybe I'm actually finally losing her. Maybe the ship's not sinking, maybe it's sunk. Maybe we're on the seabed now. Maybe the ship's wood is starting to rot and all the anchors in the world can't save us anymore. (BJ)
8) And with that, the finite window closes. The time machine the universe gave me catches on fire, collapses in on itself. The trick shot fails. The disaster of what we've become blitzes right past what we were, circles the drain of what we could be a couple of times before it teeters off to the side and lands smack bang right where we don't want to be. I fucked my Hail Mary. (BJ)
9) I'm doing my best to rein it in, not to laugh. She doesn't like it when I laugh at her. It's a skill that's taken years to hone and has probably shaved days off the span of my life. (BJ)
10) She catches my eye from across the room, holding like our hands can't. (BJ)
11) "She's happy." And my heart is breaking right there on my face. (BJ)
12) Her eyes are too heavy for me to hold on to anymore. I feel sick. (BJ)
13) Then the world goes to black. We lock eyes. And this sheet of impenetrable glass slides up from the ground between us. We can't touch and we can't talk and there's nothing to say anyway besides him screaming through the glass that he misses me and me screaming that I miss him too and him screaming that he's sorry and me screaming that it's not enough. Our faces are frozen in what feels like hopeless love but couldn't be, because I don't love him anymore. I cannot. The moment passes. The glass slides down. (Magnolia)
14) What a mind fuck it is to comfort the person who just blew your whole heart open with a rifle. Carnage everywhere, men down, blood spilled. (Magnolia)
15) And sometimes I wish I could go back in time and tell little me to fucking run - that girl is going to ruin you, she'll be all you think of, all the time, she's going to bake biscuits, grind up your heart and use it for sprinkles, she'll hurt you and you'll hurt her, and you'll never, fucking ever, get past her. But I can't. (BJ).
16) The way my life had grown around him, like ribs around a heart. ... I loved not being alone. I loved spending all my time with someone, filling my rib space with someone else. (Magnolia)
17) Because loving him is the same thing as tossing the keys to my heart to a valet without a driver's license. He'll drive me off a cliff. (Magnolia)
18) I remember it, like a physical punch in the gut, how much I loved him. Really loved him. To the bone, loved him. Cut me and I'd bleed him. (Magnolia)
19) Our eyes hold like our hands won't. I love you, he blinks. Prove it, I sigh. (Magnolia)
20) I love her in the dark. I mean, fuck it - I down and out love her in all spectrums of light, even the absence of it. (BJ)
I have never read a book that has made me laugh, cry and giggle quite like this one did. You just simply feel all the characters' feelings so deeply it hurts yourself a little bit.
There are simply too many great quotes to choose from, but I'll give you a few:
1) Leaving him would always involve pain, an act of violence, like ripping my heart from my own chest, leaving it on a bench somewhere, hoping for the best until I could make it to a hospital and be patched up, but I don't think you can live too long with your heart outside of your chest. (Magnolia)
2) I start to wonder how many people in your lifetime do you get to love how I love her? Can't be that many. How many loves do you get? Tell me it's two. Fuck. Please, tell me it's two. Jo pulls me backwards and away from her and I think the ties that bind us, I think I hear them snap. It's not two. (BJ)
3) Can you die from a broken heart, do you know? And if I did and they cut me wide open, would I bleed loving him? When they lift my heart out of my chest cavity to weigh it, does it weigh the same as his top lip? Is his name carved into my third rib to the left? Bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. He's killing me. Loving him is killing me too, and I'm afraid because how many loves really, do you get in a lifetime? How many chances do you give it before you let it go? (Magnolia)
4) Of course we're going to work, even if I'm a round peg and he's a square hole - I don't care, I'll shave down the edges of myself to keep him. I'd do anything for him. (Magnolia)
5) I know that some love is beautiful, and some is freeing, some unravels you, some love poisons you, some blinds you, some betters you, and some loves break you in invisible ways that no one else knows about until you have to stand up and the weight of your love crushes your bones. (Magnolia)
6) Someone could have hit me in the stomach with a pole. Her mouth twitches and the glassiness of her eyes spills over a little. Fucks me up worse than it does her because she can't see her own face when she's crying but I can. Those fucking emerald eyes. I'd sell my liver on the black market to stop her from crying, sell everything I own, rip my heart out of my own chest - but I think I've already done that. (BJ)
7) Is this what I've been doing to her all these years? Is this how her chest feels? Because it feels like I've got carpet burn inside my chest. This weird slow sinking like my ribs are collapsing in on themselves and that maybe I'm actually finally losing her. Maybe the ship's not sinking, maybe it's sunk. Maybe we're on the seabed now. Maybe the ship's wood is starting to rot and all the anchors in the world can't save us anymore. (BJ)
8) And with that, the finite window closes. The time machine the universe gave me catches on fire, collapses in on itself. The trick shot fails. The disaster of what we've become blitzes right past what we were, circles the drain of what we could be a couple of times before it teeters off to the side and lands smack bang right where we don't want to be. I fucked my Hail Mary. (BJ)
9) I'm doing my best to rein it in, not to laugh. She doesn't like it when I laugh at her. It's a skill that's taken years to hone and has probably shaved days off the span of my life. (BJ)
10) She catches my eye from across the room, holding like our hands can't. (BJ)
11) "She's happy." And my heart is breaking right there on my face. (BJ)
12) Her eyes are too heavy for me to hold on to anymore. I feel sick. (BJ)
13) Then the world goes to black. We lock eyes. And this sheet of impenetrable glass slides up from the ground between us. We can't touch and we can't talk and there's nothing to say anyway besides him screaming through the glass that he misses me and me screaming that I miss him too and him screaming that he's sorry and me screaming that it's not enough. Our faces are frozen in what feels like hopeless love but couldn't be, because I don't love him anymore. I cannot. The moment passes. The glass slides down. (Magnolia)
14) What a mind fuck it is to comfort the person who just blew your whole heart open with a rifle. Carnage everywhere, men down, blood spilled. (Magnolia)
15) And sometimes I wish I could go back in time and tell little me to fucking run - that girl is going to ruin you, she'll be all you think of, all the time, she's going to bake biscuits, grind up your heart and use it for sprinkles, she'll hurt you and you'll hurt her, and you'll never, fucking ever, get past her. But I can't. (BJ).
16) The way my life had grown around him, like ribs around a heart. ... I loved not being alone. I loved spending all my time with someone, filling my rib space with someone else. (Magnolia)
17) Because loving him is the same thing as tossing the keys to my heart to a valet without a driver's license. He'll drive me off a cliff. (Magnolia)
18) I remember it, like a physical punch in the gut, how much I loved him. Really loved him. To the bone, loved him. Cut me and I'd bleed him. (Magnolia)
19) Our eyes hold like our hands won't. I love you, he blinks. Prove it, I sigh. (Magnolia)
20) I love her in the dark. I mean, fuck it - I down and out love her in all spectrums of light, even the absence of it. (BJ)