Is this Harry Styles fan fiction? I kept waiting for someone’s parents to try to sell them to One Direction to cover their gambling debts.
Magnolia Parks is a young and beautiful London socialite. BJ Ballentine is the bad boy influencer who broke her heart. They grew up together, were dating, broke up because of his infidelity, and now they’re “best friends”. I totally got suckered into this book by the cover. The pink heels are very cute so I threw this on my holds list and promptly forgot about it. Seven months later it popped up on my Kindle and I settled in for what I hoped would be a fun, frothy read full of fashion I could Google. It must be good if it’s so popular right?
One of the things I love about reading is experiencing things that I have no desire to encounter in real life. I can excuse a lot because it’s fictional, especially when tiptoeing around the darker corners of the romance genre. This one really pushed against my limits though. Magnolia as a character is definitely spoiled, selfish, and has daddy issues she needs to work on. BJ has anger issues and serious problems with both sex and drug addiction that he needs to address with a professional. These two things are not the same. I don’t care how many side characters say ‘you’re both hurting each other’ or try to tell me how terrible Magnolia is. At least they didn’t have BJ actually hit her cause I was just waiting for that to start happening.
When I went looking to see what other reviewers said about this book (5s and 1s and little in between) I found out there’s a whole Magnolia Parks Universe. And I will say that while I was hating pretty much every character I was still getting pulled right along from page to page. I don’t think I can recommend it but if you too are fooled by the cute cover it’s not the end of the world.
