Reviews with content warning for Eating disorder - Magnolia Parks

Read this if you want relationship drama mixed with a bit of mystery and then some kinda random poetical things about love. I love romance so the fact that this was mostly about a relationship I found it super fast paced. Not much plot and more about their character and how they navigate their lives. I also liked reading about the side characters and everyone is really rich which makes it even more entertaining. I also liked the friendship dynamics and it's dual POV in first person.

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emmareidy's review against another edition

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challenging emotional sad medium-paced

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

4.5

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kryfrh's review against another edition

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emotional funny

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.75

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sarahemhavens's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad

3.0

phew this book was an quite an experience. I didn’t shed tears over this book, but it did bring me back to an incredibly difficult, tumultuous time of my life. This book is giving gossip girl, & toxic love in all the worst ways (or best if you’re into that for whatever reason). While reading this, I found a lot of things to be romanticized that I feel shouldn’t be. Specifically, the way that eating disorders or starving oneself were talked about made me really uncomfortable. So many red flags in this book too, don’t even get me started.

I struggle with the rating of this book because there are some things I found enjoyable, and some things I found highly relatable to my life experiences. Chapter 7 in particular really took me for a loop, and I think the ability to relate to something heavily in a book automatically makes me want to rate it higher. If i didn’t find this book relatable in some way, it definitely would not have made even 3 stars for me. (I’ll be honest it’s teetering on the brink of 3 stars, as is).

I think that Hastings has writing capabilities. There were some powerful, impactful, and thought provoking lines, but I found honestly quite a few typos in this book and all in all, the writing was for the most part confusing and jumbled? Lots of weird run on sentences, poor grammar - sometimes I reread sentences over and over because it didn’t even sound like it made a complete, coherent thought. I wondered a few times reading this if it was rushed, a draft, or if it even had an editor?
(I also really hated the whole fashion detail that magnolia did throughout the whole book, sorry but I skimmed over that just about every time).

I did enjoy reading this book, but I can’t say I stand behind shipping a toxic love, or supporting magnolia in any of her toxic behaviors

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ong's review against another edition

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cannot take any of them anymore😍 their names are a joke, their personalities is just Brands & fucking, made me hate the billionaire trope🩷 all those money & yall can’t find a decent discreet therapist? please

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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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