Love and Peaches

Peaches #3

by Jodi Lynn Anderson

Together for another juicy summer, carefree Murphy, perfect Leeda, and big-hearted Birdie return to the place that allowed them to bloom. Brimming with all the charm, humor, and heart of Peaches and The Secrets of Peaches, this satisfying conclusion to Jodi Lynn Anderson's popular series reunites three unlikely best friends for a final sweet farewell.

When Murphy chose New York City, she left her first love behind. Now, a summer in Bridgewater means trading subway trains for pickup trucks and facing the boy she turned her back on.

Leeda expects her trip home to be over faster than her new Manhattan boyfriend can hail a cab—until a surprising inheritance saddles her with a huge responsibility.

Birdie's heart led her all the way to Mexico, and heartbreak brings her back to the orchard. But when the Darlington family decides to leave peach trees for palm trees, Birdie gets a crash course in letting go—and learning when to hold on.

Genres: Young Adult, Romance, Contemporary, Fiction, Realistic Fiction, Chick Lit, Teen

260 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 28, 2008

About the author

I write strange and mythical stories about young people.

Reviews

[Kitty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Evet mart ayının 2'sinde başladığım Şeftali Kokan Bir Aşk'ı tam 25 gün sonra bitirebildim. Şimdi sanmayın ki kitap berbattı da ben bitiremedim. Kitap çok güzeldi allahım allahım aşığım bu seriye ama tabi ben reading slump karışımı bir durumun içinde olduğum için Şeftali Kokan Bir Aşk'ı bu kadar uzzzunn bir sürede bitirebildim. Halbuki incecik bir kitap her neyse tabi. Kitap muazzam idi ya. Serinin bitmiş olması üzdü doğrusu. Sizi özleyeceğim çocuklar...

[Rox · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really don’t know what to say. I’m so happy and touched by this series, I just can’t describe my feelings. I was so afraid of this book. I love the first and second books so much. But, this book is just what I needed without knowing it. It is the best conclusion I could ever asked. I loved it and I’m really sad it’s over. I cried too much and I’m still sobbing. This review is a bunch of love, sadness and pure happiness. Thank you Jodi Lynn Anderson.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

2018 Update: Oh my God I just found this review and I forgot I always used to use those little equal sign/square bracket smilies! Aw. Throwback.

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This book is love.
And peaches. =]

[mau · Rating 5 out of 5]

PEACHES SERIES ITS SO HARD TO LET U GO :(((( this story and the characters in it are so very dear to me. this book will always feel like my cozy fluffy red mushroom patterned blanket (merci marmitine) and i will forever hold the stories it told close to my heart. i liked how there were things that now, as a 22 yo mauren and not little 11yo me i could understand better or simply feel like i had overcome / lived it as well years ago . sad and funny how u can’t hold onto anything forever and i loved (BUT IT HURT) that it was also showed in this series . THE LAST SENTENCE BROKE ME ? so beautiful. love any media that makes me incredibly sad or miserable or creeped out or a mix of those three so this ? a 5/5 🫶🏽

[Niek Emm · Rating 3 out of 5]

such a sweet ending of the series

[Abby Mineweaser · Rating 5 out of 5]

Favorite book out of the three, it was so cute. It had my enemies to lovers and love triangle involved so i just had to give it a 5. Made me cry towards the end but im glad Leeds took over the orchard and made it an animal shelter. Thanks peaches for occupying my time 🥰

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was walking around in my local Barnes and Noble one day to find my next advisory book, I walked over to the new releases table and saw "Love and Peaches", by Jodi Lynn Anderson and got very excited. I was happy because I read the other two books in this series, "Peaches" and "The Secrets of Peaches" and was not aware that Anderson was releasing a third book in the series. This series revolves around a group of three main girls: Leeda, Birdie and Murphy whose experiences on Birdies father's peach farm guide them to grow closer and share their stories of love, discovery and sadness so vividly with the reader. In this installment, the girls are each in college and all meet up on the peach orchard one summer to deal with the orchard's unexpected fate: they must cope with the discovery that the orchard will be torn down. Throughout the novel, Anderson guides the reader on a journey through each girl's perspective, which makes me as the reader want to continue on with the story. I ended up reading this book relatively quickly because i already knew the basic story line and was anxious to see how Anderson would end each one's story. I feel that the idea of the orchard being torn down was a great way to end the series because it made Birdie appear more vulnerable, which then made the 3 girls reunite and renew their friendship. I love Anderson's writing style because she uses the technique of dialogue to display the perils of the girls friendships very nicely. Also in this installment, there are a series of letters that Leeda discovers from her deceased grandmother, who left Leeda to care for her long loved ponies, and Anderson separates these letters from the text by using italics, which i think was an effective way for the reader to transition from the story to the letters. I would recommend this book mainly to people who have read the other two stories, but altogether i think that someone could catch onto the plot even if they are a newcomer to the Peaches books.

[Becky · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've loved these books for how real they feel, how they don't shy away from the real complications of life to tie things up in a neat bow. This book felt a little more like an effort to tie things in a bow as the concluding volume, but it kept things messy and some of the twists really impressed me.

There's more emphasis on Leeda in this book. She is the least developed character of the three--or maybe her personality is just that she doesn't know who she is. Her development in this book is interesting to watch but in places much more predictable than the storylines for the other two, especially her love story. It also seems like the author tried to cram the development of her personality and interests into this one book. I think it would have been more satisfying if there had been more hints to the readers earlier of what she really loved. Similarly, Birdie's new passion seemed to come out of left field.

Leeda's grandmother's secret left me stunned and thinking about that tragedy for days. Very impressively written, and the way her secret love is revealed at the end I think would make it accessible to anyone, even if they don't understand. Love is love.

I dislike epilogues that take the characters far into the future and this book has one. Too many bows. All in all, a worthy successor, but this volume has some weaknesses its predecessors didn't.

[Bella · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was the third book in the Peaches series. The three friends come back home for the summer to see each other. Leeda inherits $500,000 and 25 mini horses from her dead grandmother, Birdie gets engaged, and Murphy finds out that her father is Judge Abott. Many things happen to them, and they all realize that they're not really happy and they need to stop pretending to be something they're not.
I can connect this to the Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants. In that series, there are four friends who have to find themselves over the summer. In both books they go on lots of adventures with their best friends. I can also make a text to self connection because when I'm with my best friends, I have a lot more fun and I can be myself. That's the same way the girls in Love And Peaches are.
I gave this book four stars. I thought it was really good, because the characters are quirky and very real. None of them are perfect girls that you never see in real life. Also, it made me cry at the end and I only cry in books if I really really like them. If you liked Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants you will really like the Peaches series.

[Emma the Dork · Rating 4 out of 5]

pretty decent ending to the trilogy, but rather pointless to tell u the truth, i mean, with no enrico and birdie, which i have to say, REALLY pissed my off. why didnt they get married like rex and murphy? why? WHY??? rex annoys me anyway. hes very stalkerish.

[WendyTheOwl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Le tome le plus court, le dernier.
Clairement, le tome 3 est meilleur que le tome précédent.
Un tantinet moins "immatures", les problèmes des trois filles sont un peu plus adultes.
Je retrouve cette ambiance du premier tome que j'avais apprécié.
Une saga moyenne, mais à lire au moins une fois.

[Lucita Ocaña Dessen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was not aware that this was a trilogy, which is why it took me so long to read the third book, but it was so worth the wait!!!

This author is RIDICULOUSLY GOOD at setting scenes, and this book was no exception. Nothing like a summer based book to get you out of the February downers for a while.

I also really loved where all the characters ended up. How Murphy ended up being almost conventional, how Leeda defied expectations and ended up with the orchard, and how Birdie ended up freed from the farm to travel the world.

I also thought it was really interesting what the author chose to show us: how we didn’t see Leeda and Eric breaking up or Murphy and Rex getting together. I thought it really emphasized what became important to each character and who they became as people.

All in all, I LOVED THIS BOOK AND THIS SERIES SO MUCH!!! One hundred thousand percent recommend!!!

[Tanya · Rating 4 out of 5]

I cried when I finished it. Jodi Lynn has a new book coming out this fall. I will be first in line to get it. The way this woman writes is pure magic. I'm jealous of her talent but grateful for the finished product.

[Joy| joyluck.bookclub · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading these as a kid gave me a lot of comfort and rereading them as an adult did the exact same.

[ciara shea · Rating 5 out of 5]

i really did not expect to be so attached to these books by the end of everything.. looking back i think this is such a sweet series and so telling of what change feels like when you’re young.

[Begum · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okurken en çok ağladığım kitaplardan birisi, ritüeli tamamladım

[Katelynn Isbel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Way better than the second but still didn't top my love for the first.
This brought back a lot of what I loved about Peaches and that made me super happy. Our characters felt like themselves again and I loved the growth they all made in this. I will say though that I totally saw the reveals coming. I knew who Murphy's dad was from the first book and I picked up on the mystery surrounding Leeda's grandmom very early on in this book. But, I still really enjoyed it. I wish Rex was more present but I'm happy with how things worked out. I liked the new character, Grey very much and I liked where the story ended for him too. I was sad about what happened with the orchard and still am but it's still being used for good and helped one of our main characters find herself. All in all, a great conclusion to this trilogy.

[Summer · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars. A strong conclusion.

After a year away at school (Murphy and Leeda in NYC, Birdie in Mexico City) the girls return to the orchard, Murphy dealing with the unfinished business of her father and Rex, Birdie running from a hasty engagement and clinging to her old life and Leeda, reluctantly tasked with caring for miniature ponies and a menagerie of other animals.

I really enjoyed where these girls ended up, while romance plays a sometimes bittersweet role, there’s more than that going on for each of them, it wasn’t all about getting the happily ever after with a guy, it’s figuring out their happily ever after as an individual person and if they also had a love interest in the end that was just an added bonus, there was something so satisfying about the focus of this story.

When I started this trilogy, innocent, heartfelt, itching to spread her wings, Birdie, was easily my favorite character and I do still love her, but I’ve grown so much more attached to Leeda than I would have expected after the first book, seeing her go from someone so uncertain about who she is, who leaned heavily on her boyfriends and her mom’s opinions, and then to see her gradually with time and struggle emerge as this wholly independent young woman who knows her own mind and heart and is unafraid to go after what she wants even if it defies what’s expected of her. Leeda’s growth, her perfectly paced arc over the course of these books turned out for me to be one of the emotional high points of this memorable trilogy.

[Ellis · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's no question Jodi Lynn Anderson can write, but I can't help but feel like this one was written mostly to have closure (though if you're looking for HEAs, ha ha hahaha). I think I would have preferred this series to have been a duology. However, Murhpy, Birdie and Leeda are some of the realest, most confused characters I've ever met, which doesn't always make it fun to read about them, but I think there should be more characters/stories like those Anderson writes. Though purely out of self-preservation reasons, I'm going to pass a motion that she's never allowed to write about traces again.

Oh, and p. 223 was missing in my copy (paperback), which didn't bother me too much since it was a Leeda chapter and it was rather easy to gauge what it was about, thanks to the surrounding context and the fact that this realisation had been alluded to since p. 40 (though if this no page 223 thing was intentional, I'm going to have to have some words with everyone involved with that decision because of the nature of the content and how harmful intentional erasure would be in that case).

[Sheila · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful addition to the Peaches trilogy...(It may even be my favorite!) It kept me interested throughout and it sucked me in as Anderson's other books have. I felt like I was one of the characters and the book was a movie playing out in my mind. The book goes deeper than simply discussing friends and family from a small town but also covers topics such as love, loss, life struggles, responsibility, strength, passion, and self-esteem! The book is very well written. I would recommend this book, along with the first two Peaches books, to any young woman in high school or college....and even to any adults who want to endulge in a sweet, inspiring, thought-provoking, and fun collection of novels to make you feel young and free! :)

[Kate Coombs · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you liked the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants books, you'll like these--this is the third and final book in a trilogy. It is YA, though--there's some talk about sex, though it's handled tastefully (again, as in Brasheres's books). But these Peaches books are strong in their own right, especially this last volume. The characters grow, not in the predictable way people usually do in books, but in the uneven, complex ways they do in real life, with just as many questions as answers. Plus Anderson writes beautifully.

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

An improvement on the second, but still not as devourable as the first, I liked this book. I love love LOVED how Leeda became a vet, after how damn depressing she was in the last book, I felt she really shined in this one. I liked that the girls finally figured out who they were and what they were destined to do - though I wouldn't mind a follow-up, just to see how the girls are in adulthood!

[Mari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ett värdigt slut på en bra trilogi.

Det jag irriterar mig på i den här boken är missarna i översättning eller korrektur. Förstår inte riktigt hur en person helt plötsligt kan få ett annat namn från en bok till en annan, och det är inte bara en person det gäller heller.

[Meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good ending to a touching series. I loved these books from start to finish. I'm happy with each ending for Birdie, Murphy, and Leeda. I wish Leeda had found out more about what was in her grandmother's letters but the author finished all of their storylines.

[Zoé · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un trilogie bien mignonne qui redonne le sourire. En tant que grande fan de Quatre filles et un jean étant gamine, retrouver cet esprit m'as donné du baume au coeur.

[Unicornluyoda · Rating 4 out of 5]

kitabın başında her ne kadar sıkılıp bir türlü içine giremesem de sonu o kadar güzel bitti ki 4 yıldız aldı benden. Serinin en güzel kitabı buydu keşke bitmeseydi dedim sonunda.

[Elaine · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book I have chosen to read is Love and Peaches. The author's name is Jodi Lynn Anderson. The setting of this book is New York. The main characters are Murphy, Birdie, and Leeda. I found this book in my school library. Of all the books that I looked at, this was the most interesting. It looked interesting because of its peach photo, and I like to eat peaches during the summer.

The book starts with a brief introduction and then goes into the first chapter. The 3 friends try to navigate through their friendship, relationships, and family challenges. They will all face challenges in their lives, balancing their growth and pressure in their surroundings. In the book, they face challenging steps in their life, like Leeda trying to reconcile with her family because of her grandma’s death of getting her inheritance and her relationship with her boyfriend because of all of the pressure of being the “perfect daughter” she couldn’t communicate with her boyfriend as much as she could before. While Murphy is still trying to fix the relationship with her mother because she wants to move out and have fun with her friends her mother is against the idea of her moving out of the house, and trying to come to terms with her self-worth. Lastly, BIrdie is trying to better herself by making a more mature version of herself, love, and friendship as she’s going to have to face the reality of growing up leaving her childhood behind, and finding her future.

I feel this book has truly shown what a person can go through, by who can help you or comfort you or just by being there for you. Some people have things going on in their life and if people need improvement then they shouldn’t have to show it, but people do, and by doing that they can shut you out and not talk to you at all. Overall this book has taught me that all little situations can teach you some things or bigger situations can help you tell you how to go through it. “Love is a strange thing. You think you know what it is, but you really never do until it hits you in the face” (Lynn 73). This quote shows you that people don’t know until reality hits you.

My personal opinion on this book was this book wasn't really for me I didn’t like how this story was set but this book isn't bad. For people who like to read about having hardships with their family and relationships, but being able to hang around with their friends.

[Melissa Killian · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I conclude my revisit to the Darlington peach orchard, I must say that I enjoyed LOVE AND PEACHES much more than book 2, but not as much as book 1. The first book was a fun friendship story, while the second book was about all the things that can go wrong as the characters grew up and grew apart. It was a tough read. LOVE AND PEACHES still had a lot of devastation. There was death, destruction, and heartbreak, but there was also hope at the end. I was (mostly) satisfied with the conclusion.

WARNING!!!! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!


I thought Murphy and Rex ending up in Chicago was a nice compromise and made sense for their characters. But I also thought Murphy was very lucky that things ended the way they did, after she treated Rex so poorly throughout books 2 and 3.

I liked the way Leeda's character grew in the third book, with her interest in animals and breaking away from the mold her parents made for her. I will admit that her part in book 2 and the beginning of book 3 really annoyed me until she started to break out on her own path. I also enjoyed the surprising twist revealed about her grandmother in the letters Leeda found.

Birdie losing the orchard was hard for me to take because that had been her dream since the beginning, to maintain her family's legacy. I thought it strange that she couldn't rebuild the farmhouse on another part of the property that would be more stable. Leeda could've helped her finance it and they could've split the property. Then the peach trees wouldn't have been left to rot. (That was the saddest part of this whole trilogy! They let the orchard die!) Birdie traveling around after leaving the orchard made sense because she really enjoyed her time in Mexico. But her writing travel articles as a career didn't make sense to me. Did she ever express an interest in writing throughout the entire series? If she did, I missed it.

[Kayden Lucent]

Love and Peaches
By Jodi Lynn Anderson
Published by HarperTeen

Love and Peaches is a fiction young adult romance novel in which three girls are forced to make decisions that will impact their futures. Each girl has their own plot and their own problems they have to work through.

The book Love and Peaches is about Birdie, Murphy, and Leeda, who return from their freshman years at different universities to Bridgewater, Georgia. Once they return, they face new responcibilties, develop doubts, and discover new secrets.

The book is only 243 pages long including the epologue. This book follows up Peaches by Jodi, which includes the same three main characters.

I truly liked the book. It is really hard to find a book that is eye catching to me and that keeps me interested. I believe the characters are credible and their stories are all relevant to each other. There was always something happening and I never got bored.

There are three main plots, one for each character. Leeda is faced with ponies that she has to sell inherited from her grandmother and trying to decide weither she wants to stay with her current boyfriend that she rarely sees or leave him for someone else. Birdie’s parents decide they want to sell the peach orchard and move to Florida and Birdie does not want to leave her friends and her amazing childhood home that she loves. Murphy does not really care for people, but ended up falling in love with a guy named Rex in which she comes home to realize that he had moved away and she also tries to find out who her father is since her mother is hiding it from her.

I recommend Love and Peaches as well as the two books before this one, Peaches, and The Secret of Peaches.

[Nancy Garcia · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Love and Peaches" from Jodi Lynn Anderson is a novel full of mystery and drama. This book was exceptional, although it took me a while to get into it. The middle and the end of the novel were extremely engaging, which made me want to continue reading it. Jodi Lynn Anderson helps readers realize the difficulties of being a young adult because of the huge decisions that must be made.
"Love and Peaches" is about Leeda, Birdie, and Murphy, who are three young girls with different problems in their lives. Every summer, these girls meet up with each other in Georgia, which is where they lived their childhood, but they didn’t realize that change was about to take place. A paternity test, an engagement, a new lover can all change their lives forever. They will be forced to learn how to say goodbye to the past, but they will also learn that when something matters, it will stay with them forever even if it’s not physically there.
The first couple of chapters didn’t grab my attention, but when the rising action began, I was completely focused on the story. Personally, I truly enjoyed this novel because it contained several examples of what a real-life teenager might experience. It gives you the insight of a young adult’s mind, which made me like the story even more. Anderson makes sure that she leaves her readers wanting more after every chapter. Overall, I recommend "Love and Peaches" to anyone who enjoys reading a novel full of cliffhangers and drama.