Love and Peaches by Jodi Lynn Anderson

For some reason I can perfectly remember when I bought Peaches by Jodi Lynn Anderson: I was at Borders in 2006, and I was browsing for new reading material. This was back when I felt I needed to purchase every book I read (oh how I have since mended these ways!), and unfortunately for every three books I bought and loved, there was one that I didn't care for. Thus is the reason I love the library and paperbackswap.com now.

Anyway, I remember that I wasn't looking for anything specific other than wanting new reading material. This wasn't uncommon for me back then, and I often spent a good hour browsing Borders with no concrete plans on what to buy. All I knew was that I would inevitably walk out with something. This day as I browsed the paperback tables, my eyes alighted on an orange sherbet-colored book with peaches on the front and a cute font. It grabbed my attention, and the back of the book sounded interesting. I purchased it happily, and I read it with a lot of enthusiasm. It was a cute story about three girls living in Georgia: Leeda, Birdie, and Murphy. All three were as different as can be, and they became close friends while working on Birdie's father's peach orchard during the harvesting season. Of course there were boys, parental problems, and a little bit of teenage angst thrown in, but I really loved this book.

A year or two later the sequel, Secrets of Peaches, showed up on a shelf at Borders. I had known it was coming and had waited with growing anticipation. This book continued the story of these three friends, and while I didn't care for it as much as I did Peaches, nevertheless it was still a fun enough read.

Fast forward to now: I don't remember when or even how I heard about a third Peaches book, but somehow it came to my attention. Unfortunately, I didn't quite get around to reading it until just a few days ago. This third one, Love and Peaches, is the end of the short series. I say that with bittersweet feelings because while not the best I've ever read, they're certainly enjoyable and entertaining for a Young Adult fan such as myself. This third installment begins with the three girls just as they have finished up Year One of college. Things have changed for each of them, and this summer proves to mold them even more.

I think my favorite part of this series is the way Jodi Lynn Anderson has managed to let these characters evolve and grow up in a way that doesn't feel forced or unrealistic. At the end of the series all three girls are different people than they were at the start of the first book, but it's a wonderfully natural progression to me. These books have a very similar feel to the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, but for some reason they just speak to me a bit more than the pants do.