The brand new book in the addictive Magnolia Parks Universe contemporary romance series, which combines all the glamour of Gossip Girl with the heartache of the Twilight series and It Ends With Us.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Into The Dark by Jessa Hastings, which is out now!
How many loves do you actually get in a lifetime? Everyone knows by now that Magnolia and BJ are in the stars, but is that enough?
Magnolia and BJ are reeling from a devastating loss as they try to plan what’s been dubbed “the wedding of the century”. As family tensions mount and their respective pasts begin catching up to them, they finally have to look the truth in the eye: Can they learn to trust and be with one another again, or will they die trying?
I look over at Henry leaning back on the bedhead on his brother’s side of the bed. He’s frowning at a sudoku puzzle. I don’t know why he likes them but he always has, even when he was small. Back then it was find-a-words, but by the time we were at Varley, it was sudoku. He bites down on the pencil, and his eyes pinch more.
I peer over at it and point to one of the empty squares.
“Seven,” I tell him before he brushes my hand away with a glare.
“I don’t want your help.”
I frown at him. “Rude.”
“It is rude,” he nods. “Your professed and fucking flagrant disinterest in the art of sudoku—”
“It’s hardly an art,” I tell him, and he ignores me.
“— is rude,” he keeps going. “Because you’re annoyingly good at it.”
I roll my eyes at him and flip the page of this month’s Italian Vogue.
He grumbles a little bit, says something about being a savant and that I really should have applied myself more in maths at school and I ignore him.
I flash him a picture of a dress I don’t fancy. “They made that out of twill! How weird.”
Henry’s face pulls sarcastically. “So weird.”
“It’s summertime—” I let it hang there, though it doesn’t elicit from him the horror I anticipated. “That’s a winter fabric,”
I remind him, and he gives his puzzle a look instead of me.
Then the front door slams and Henry and I catch eyes.
“Parksy?” BJ calls for me.
I like it when he calls me that— it makes me feel fifteen again. That’s what he’d call me when we were in school, when we were together before. It sort of just showed back up once we got engaged.
“In here!” I call back to him as I dive out of the bed. “— quick!”
I yell, straightening the duvet out, waving my hands like mad at Henry. “Quick! Get out—!”
Henry tugs his corner straight and flings his sudoku book to the other side of the room— unfortunately, it hits his brother square in the face as he walks into our bedroom.
I laugh breezily and lean awkwardly against custom Savoir Winston & Nº4v bed that I had them make cream boucle.
“Hi!” I give him my brightest smile.
BJ’s eyes pinch. “Hey.”
Christian pokes his head in through the door and looks from me to Henry, then starts laughing as he sidles up next to BJ.
Beej nods his head at two in bed?”
“No.” I shake my head emphatically.
Henry shakes his with a dismissive shrug.
“No.” My head keeps shaking. “You told us to stop doing that and we definitely did truly listen.”
Henry nods along.
“And though it goes without saying, Henry definitely didn’t eat a sandwich on your side of the bed because”—I toss Henry a look and say through clenched teeth—“that would be crazy and would have given it away if there was anything to give away— which there isn’t— but if you were to say, hypothetically feel something crumb- adjacent, I think it would just be from a mouse or— um, a hungry ghoul or something.”
BJ shoves his hands through his hair and groans.
“Why won’t you sit in the fucking living room?” He looks between us, annoyed. “It looks sick.”
Beej designed it and he’s very proud.
“It does.” Henry nods again.
And actually, it does, he’s right— it looks incredible.
Christian leans against the door frame, peering between all of us, amused.
“AD did a piece on it—” BJ reminds us.
Which is also true. Architectural Digest did do a YouTube walkthrough of it— though the timing of which is considered controversial amongst the Box Set, and at the mention of it, Christian lets out an angry, defensive little grunt.
I flick him a look because BJ’s not just very proud of the living room, he’s admittedly rather oddly proud of the living room. The sort of pride one might imagine you’d possess for— I don’t know— birthing a child?
So yes, it’s a tad overzealous, but I don’t much care for anyone being disparaging towards any of BJ’s endeavours, even the ones I’m not sure that I myself entirely grasp.
“All things considered,” I give Beej a reassuring look and float over to him, wrapping his arms around me. “I love it. You did an amazing job.”
My fiancé lifts an eyebrow. “But . . . ?”
And I say nothing! I press my lips together demurely, not wanting to crush the boy I love most in all the world because he did do an excellent job. It really (truly) does look incredible. Mid-century modern, light and warm, it’s just—
Henry grimaces.
“It’s a bit angular out there, man.” He gives his brother a shrug, and Beej rolls his eyes, muttering under his breath. “And like, it’s hard to get a grip on that love seat—”
“That is true—” I nod.
“It’s a Hans J. Wegner!” BJ looks between us, incredulous. “It’s a £37,000 bench.”
“Yeah—” Christian shrugs unhelpfully. “Can’t really put a price on comfort though, can you?”
“But clearly you can put one on discomfort, ey Beej?” Henry tosses his brother a wink, and BJ flicks me an unimpressed look.
I stare up at BJ with big, sorry eyes.
“You do sort of just . . . slip off. You know that—” I tell him, eyebrows up. “We tried to have sex on there and I slid right off it! Like a penguin on ice.”
His eyebrows go up.
“We found a way to make it work.”
I shake my head a little. “No, we didn’t, we just had sex on the floor.”
BJ thinks back to the moment and then a little smile rolls over his face as more of the details come back to him. We’re the best at sex, he and I.
“Oh, yeah.” He locks eyes with me and from behind us Henry grimaces.
Christian nods and smacks me in the arm as he walks further into our room. “Nice . . . Floor sex— didn’t think you had it in you, Parks.”
BJ gives me a little wink.
Henry stretches his arms up over head and sits back down on our bed. Beej picks up Henry’s sudoku and pelts it over at him.
“Stop hanging out in our bed!”
Henry shakes his head.
“Oh, we can’t,” he says, sounding sorry.
BJ’s eyebrows go up. “Why’s that?”
“Too comfy.”
From “Magnolia Parks: Into the Dark” by Jessa Hastings with permission from Dutton, an imprint of the Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2023 by Jessa Hastings.
