The Peach Keeper

Author: Sarah Addison Allen
Published: 2012
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 3.5

Summary
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.

Review
An easy summer read. The characters were interesting but not terribly memorable. The ending was a bit predictable. The inclusion of the chapter at the end telling "what really happened" was awkward; I with the author had used another device to access that information. Or perhaps even left the reader without all the answers.

Notes
I recommend this book hesitantly. There were a few sensual scenes that were borderline uncomfortable--but then the author pulled back from being too graphic.