The Heart of a Peach
by Jess B. Moore

Olivia Hamilton can do no wrong. Or at least that’s what the community of Fox River, North Carolina thinks of the odd but sweet young lady. She’s hiding a past she’d rather forget, engaged to the town’s most eligible bachelor, and longing for someone to see past the mask she wears. Olivia wants to find herself, forgive herself, and fall in love with someone who sees and embraces her flaws.

Denver MacKenna grew up the fiddle-playing prodigy of not only his hometown of Fox River but of North Carolina and the surrounding states. He plays obsessively and tours as often as possible, escaping a life of loneliness at home. Until he meets a beautiful siren who calls to him and has him making plans to settle down. Denver knows it’s wrong to covet the elusive Olivia, but finds himself inexplicably drawn to the brief glimpses she gives him of her true self.

The Heart of a Peach is the sixth book in the Fox River Romance series but can be read as a stand-alone heartwarming novel.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

I settled in with my coffee. Bless whoever invented coffee. I savored every drop.

My father had liked me better before puberty, when I’d been his little girl… Everything changed as my body developed, and as my once kind father warned me what would happen if I let boys look at me. He never talked about them touching me, only looking, condemning me for merely existing.

To say my mood had bottomed out would be an understatement. I’d gone past a mix of worry and exasperation to a new level of morose. So low, I used the word morose and felt that shit in my soul.

My Review:

This was a sweet, satisfying, and lovely tale encompassing the genres of women’s fiction, family drama, small-town, and contemporary romance. I reveled in the transformation of the character of Olivia, although I initially had concerns I could appreciate her, as she was merely a veneer, and suffering in silence.

But to say I adore this author’s work is a gross understatement, and I strive not to be gross in any manner. 😉 Not that I’m always ladylike, as the character of Olivia was expected to be by her oddly uptight parents. No, I’m far from being a lady nor do I aspire to such nonsense, I’m proud to be a strong, sassy (and often brassy) woman. But Olivia tried, so very hard, under constant and unrelenting pressure to be just that, to please her savagely peculiar parents – whose ideal seemed to be a 1940s time warp when fathers bartered and often treated their daughters like livestock.

Other than a brief spree of early teenage rebellion, Olivia had adhered to a sheltered and isolated existence with strict supervision, a plethora of bizarre rules such as no coffee (which is cruel and unusual punishment if you ask me), and sky-high expectations while still living at home under their thumb at the age of twenty-four.   She had been tediously groomed to be a trophy wife and repeatedly told she wasn’t capable of much else. She fell in line and offered no resistance, but was miserable, constantly on edge and anxious of a misstep of their thousands of rules.

Of course she was!  I’m surprised she could sit erect having lost track of her spine… I didn’t know if I was going to be able to stick with this tale as the weak and fretful Olivia was chapping my feminist posterior… Had it been an unfamiliar author, I probably would have backed away with a DNF, but in this word maven I do trust, so I rolled my eyes and continued with a tense jaw until the introduction of the delectable snack of Denver MacKenna, and I was instantly enamored with his thoughtful, kind, and gentle demeanor. Sigh, and I was totally gone for this tasty treat the more I read. Denver was THE superlative BBF. His calm and steady nature was the perfect tonic to balance out Olivia’s debilitating self-doubt and anxieties and gave her the strength and courage to blossom.  I wants me one of those!

As is her style, Ms. Moore’s engaging arrangements of words were easy to follow yet told an unusually insightful, perceptive, and profoundly observant story with real-world issues, all the feels, and recognizable yet uniquely conflicted characters. She deftly slipped in updates and threads of the previously featured characters in this delightfully ongoing series while maintaining a strong standalone storyline in the current installment.   The little pea in my brain is already rattling and eager to see what entertaining tale she next conjures from her ever sparking and imaginative gray matter.