The Magnolia Parks Universe: Book 2
Publication Date: November 22, 2021
All twenty-year-old Daisy Haites has ever wanted is a normal life, but as the heiress to London’s most notorious criminal empire, it’s just not in the cards for her.
Raised by her older brother, Julian, after their parents were murdered, Daisy has never been able to escape the watchful gaze of her gang-lord brother. But Julian’s line of work means that Daisy’s life is . . . complicated.
And things don’t become any easier when she falls hard for the beautiful and emotionally unavailable Christian Hemmes, who happens to be one of the few men in London who doesn’t answer to Julian.
Christian’s life is no walk in the park either, since he’s in love with his best friend’s girlfriend, Magnolia Parks.
He’s happy enough to use Daisy to throw off the scent of his true affections—until she starts to infiltrate those, too.
As their romance blossoms into something neither was anticipating, Daisy and Christian must come to terms with the fact that in this life everything comes at a price. Relationships intersect and tangle, and Daisy, Christian, and Julian will learn that sometimes life’s most worthwhile pursuits can only be paid in blood.
In the second book of the Magnolia Parks Universe, author Jessa Hastings introduces another complicated relationship.
Daisy Haites, named after the female main character, enjoys a casual, no-strings-attached relationship with Christian, who happens to be in love with his best friend’s girlfriend. To further complicate matters, Daisy’s brother, Julian, is the head of a gang, which means she is forced to live a protected life.
As the storyline progresses, Christian and Daisy begin experiencing feelings for each other that neither anticipated. What ensues is a series of actions between two people who continue to make mistakes while trying to navigate whirlwind emotions.
I kept waiting for a happily ever after, but the author apparently has other plans that will likely unfold in future installments of the series.
Daisy Haites highlights plenty of angst at the hands of Daisy and Christian as they try to cope with their feelings.
Jessa Hastings is an Australian native who now lives in Southern California with her husband, two children, two cats, and a dog. They have, as their best friend calls it, gone “full farm.” Jessa is a chronic overthinker and has, in this very moment, begrudgingly accepted American coffee and how depressing it is. She finds Twitter and small talk equally terrifying, and often still pines for a sourdough loaf in America that doesn’t make her tummy hurt or cost $45 for half a loaf. Magnolia Parks was her debut novel and the launch of the series, and she clearly struggles to write a concise or topically relevant author’s biography. She is sorry for this.
