Daisy Haites

Daisy Haites is the second installment in Jessa Hastings’s Magnolia Parks Universe series. The series includes five titles: Magnolia Parks (2021), Daisy Haites (2021), Magnolia Parks: The Long Way Home (2021), Daisy Haites: The Great Undoing (2022), and Magnolia Parks: Into the Dark (2024). Hastings originally self-published Magnolia Parks, and it was subsequently republished by Orion Fiction in the UK in 2022. The release of Magnolia Parks launched the Magnolia Parks series. This initial title also establishes the parameters of the Magnolia Parks Universe and introduces the central relationships, conflicts, stakes, and themes for all four subsequent titles.

In Magnolia Parks, Hastings alternates between Magnolia Parks’s and BJ Ballentine’s first-person points of view. London socialite Magnolia Parks falls in love with BJ, “Britain’s most photographed bad-boy lothario” (“Books.” Magnolia Parks Universe). Although Magnolia and BJ seem like they are meant to be together, the romantic counterparts can’t help but hurt each other. The more affairs they have, the more they’re forced to question what true love means.

In Daisy Haites, Hastings shifts to Daisy as the primary protagonist with Magnolia as a secondary character. Characters from Magnolia Parks recur in this second instalment, which complicates the characters’ regard for morality, loyalty, and legacy. In the series’ third novel, Magnolia Parks: The Long Way Home, Hastings returns her focus to Magnolia’s character and storyline. A year after Magnolia leaves her life in London for New York with her boyfriend, Tom England, she finds herself back at home with BJ. The former couple’s reunion makes them ponder the strength of their love and the tumultuous nature of their connection

In the fourth title, Daisy Haites: The Great Undoing, Daisy discovers that she cannot leave her family, home, and life of crime behind. She finds herself back under Julian’s control and back in a relationship with Christian. Meanwhile, Magnolia and Julian start seeing each other. The characters’ shifting alliances complicate how they see themselves and understand their futures as friends, lovers, and a family. In the fifth and final title of the series, Magnolia Parks: Into the Dark, Magnolia and BJ start planning an elaborate wedding. These preparations ignite family conflicts and dredge up the characters’ complicated personal histories. As a result, Magnolia and BJ must examine the benefits and risks of trusting and committing to each other.

All five of the Magnolia Parks Universe novels are contemporary romance titles. They also fall under the subgenre of crime or mafia romance. They incorporate elements of love, betrayal, violence, danger, and deception to heighten the narrative tension and stakes. They also embrace genre tropes like the second-chance romance, forced proximity, enemies-to-lovers, and friends-to-lovers tropes. These familiar narrative models lend the titles structure and predictability amidst the otherwise raucous Magnolia Parks Universe.

The Magnolia Parks titles are in conversation with other suspense romance, mafia romance, and dark romance novels. Hastings’s series is reminiscent of titles like Mercedes Ron’s Our Fault, Becca Ritchie and Krista Ritchie’s Damaged Like Us, and Elle Kennedy’s The Legacy.