Liked Sweet Magnolias? Here's the Reason You Shouldn't Read the Books

Netflix's Sweet Magnolias is one of the streaming giant's most popular melodramas, which has been a quiet hit since its first season premiered in 2020. As the second season arrived on Netflix the following year, the story of three friends who have cared for each other since high school gained even more followers.

Now, fans are desperate for an update on the lives of the beloved trio, trying to get every ounce of information they can before Season 3 premieres.

With the show growing in popularity with each passing month, it's no wonder that people are beginning to pay more attention to the source material Sweet Magnolias is based on — Sherryl Woods' bestselling novel series. But while the show features the characters created by Woods, and the author herself serves as a producer on the project, the books and the TV series they spawned don't actually have much in common.

Aside from the bare essentials that the two projects share, most of the storylines that have made the Netflix series a hit simply aren't present in the books. On top of that, the source material doesn't really have the same atmosphere as the show since Woods' novel series takes a slower and more methodical approach to building characters and their relationships.

'The only storyline that the show has that follows the books is Noreen being pregnant by Bill and Cal/Maddie dating origins. They're good books, but they don't completely match the show, despite the author working on the show,' one fan noted.

Obviously, fans are pretty disappointed about that, as many of them were hoping to kill some time before the upcoming third season. However, since the show and the books don't correlate at all, reading Woods' writing will be a huge waste of time for fans of Netflix's version of Sweet Magnolias.

'That's really a bummer. I don't get why they made the show different, it's like having the name of the series under different plots, which doesn't make sense at all. So, if I want to get into the books, it's like reading something totally different,' another fan complained.

Sweet Magnolias Season 3 will premiere on Netflix on July 20, 2023.

Source: Reddit.