Book Review - The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen

The New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Chased the Moon welcomes you to her newest locale: Walls of Water, North Carolina, where the secrets are thicker than the fog from the town’s famous waterfalls, and the stuff of superstition is just as real as you want it to be.

It’s the dubious distinction of thirty-year-old Willa Jackson to hail from a fine old Southern family of means that met with financial ruin generations ago. The Blue Ridge Madam—built by Willa’s great-great-grandfather during Walls of Water’s heyday, and once the town’s grandest home—has stood for years as a lonely monument to misfortune and scandal. And Willa herself has long strived to build a life beyond the brooding Jackson family shadow. No easy task in a town shaped by years of tradition and the well-marked boundaries of the haves and have-nots.

But Willa has lately learned that an old classmate—socialite do-gooder Paxton Osgood—of the very prominent Osgood family, has restored the Blue Ridge Madam to her former glory, with plans to open a top-flight inn. Maybe, at last, the troubled past can be laid to rest while something new and wonderful rises from its ashes. But what rises instead is a skeleton, found buried beneath the property’s lone peach tree, and certain to drag up dire consequences along with it.

For the bones—those of charismatic traveling salesman Tucker Devlin, who worked his dark charms on Walls of Water seventy-five years ago—are not all that lay hidden out of sight and mind. Long-kept secrets surrounding the troubling remains have also come to light, seemingly heralded by a spate of sudden strange occurrences throughout the town.

Now, thrust together in an unlikely friendship, united by a full-blooded mystery, Willa and Paxton must confront the dangerous passions and tragic betrayals that once bound their families—and uncover truths of the long-dead that have transcended time and defied the grave to touch the hearts and souls of the living.  

Goodreads page here
Publisher:  Hodder & Stoughton
Release Date:  22nd March 2011
Purchase it at:  Amazon UK /  Amazon USA 

My Review:   10/10
(video review at bottom of post)

There's something about a Sarah Addison Allen book that screams magic, oozing magic from each page.  Many of you may know that I also co-host a You Tube Channel called Brewing Tea Bag (channel can be found here) and this is the book we have chosen to read in the month of June.   As a very good girl, I started this at the beginning of the month and I could not put it down.  It is now halfway through the month and I have already finished it.  At 273 pages, I did wish that it could have been longer but, as they say, quality not quantity and this book is full of plenty of magical quality.  

Willa and Paxton would have to be my favourite characters in this story, following each of their stories, especially how they interacted with each other and discovering the secrets that they uncover.  The story centres on the Blue Ridge Madam that for many years has been left to ruins.  Once a beautiful family home owned and lived in by Willa's family many years ago, disaster struck and it was left abandoned.  Paxton decides to renovate the Madam but little does she know she is going to be uncovering truths that were thought long forgotten. 

This story is so rich with family history and secrets that I just could not put it down.  There are also some great romantic elements in this story as well.  I absolutely loved this book and would very highly recommend it...

Video Review




Book Trailer

Best wishes

Debs