Book Review: The Peach Keeper

I've been in quite a reading slump lately. Apart from audio books, I haven't completed anything since our spring break trip earlier in the month. I tried to get into a well-regarded book, The Child, about infant bones unearthed in a building excavation. However, with separate focus on several different characters, I had a hard time keeping them straight and struggled with multiple tenses. I know shifting from one tense to another can be used effectively in a novel with multiple perspectives, but I'm pretty sure my reading malaise stood in the way of the necessary hook.

I might have given up on The Peach Keeper, by Sarah Addison Allen, as well, if I hadn't been held hostage with no other audio book available for my daily treadmill sessions. I didn't feel enticed by the story until well into the second disc (with only six, that means a full fourth of the way into the book). Thankfully, I did stick with it. I would say it was a fairly enjoyable story (although not as good as her other book I read, Lost Lake).

Willa Jackson has no interest in attending the gala thrown by socialite Paxton Osgood, despite Paxton's request to honor the friendship shared between their grandmothers. Paxton, and her twin brother are busy working to restore the Blue Ridge Madam, a grand home that once belonged to Willa's family. When a skeleton is unearthed beneath the property's peach tree, Willa and Paxton are thrown together on a mission to discover clues to the identity of the body and how it ended up buried there. In the midst of their sleuthing both Paxton and Willa find love.

Of course, my husband walked in during an intimate moment between two of the characters (something I could have done without) and had to ask what in the world I was listening to. Ah, well. Thankfully, the scene was over quickly. I'm hoping to find something squeaky clean to listen to next. Ha! Perhaps another middle grade novel.