Review | The Great Peach Experiment #1: When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Peach Pie

Summary: The Great Peach Experiment #1: When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Peach Pie

The Peach family is embarking on The Great Peach Experiment, their first one: making and selling pies out of a food truck! Oh, and they’ll be road tripping the whole summer too. Lucy, Freddie, and Herb have spent more time with each other than with their father since their mom died. But now one of their mom’s inventions has sold for a lot of money and their dad has bought a food truck and wants them to spend the summer traveling through the country as a family.

The kids are hesitant at first, but Freddie is glad to miss summer school, so he gets on board super quickly. Firstborn and permanent watcher of her siblings, Lucy is suspicious but agrees because she wants her dad to be more present in their lives. However, she does have a summer reading list that she plans to get through during the summer. Herb is just happy as long as he gets to swim every single day while they’re on the road. The family plans to also enter a food truck contest at the end of their trip to compete for $10,000. But along the way, they learn a lot about what really matters.

The Good

This was a fun, hearty book. It did remind me a teeny bit of the Vanderbeekers, although there are fewer kids, a hard-to-like parent, and one less parent. The Peaches will steal your heart from the first few pages. I particularly loved Lucy and felt for her having to step into the big shoes of a parent because her father practically stopped seeing to his kids after his wife died.

The kids are all dealing with losing their mother in own ways. Herb feels guilty, Lucy feels sad, and Freddie is a bit lost overall. But as they get to traveling, pie-making, camping, and chatting to customers, they start to learn new things about themselves and each other. Herb’s and Lucy’s math skills come in handy and each chapter begins with artwork from Freddie which I enjoyed.

I did not like their dad for most of the book, but I did sympathize with his grief. Thankfully, he does come around after many annoying pages. I was jealous of Lucy’s reading list and Herb’s daily encounters with water bodies. Finally, prepare to salivate for most of the book because there’s a lot of food talk!

Overall: The Great Peach Experiment #1: When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Peach Pie

The Great Peach Experiment #1: When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Peach Pie is a wonderful introduction a new middle grade series for fans of The Vanderbeekers. The Peach kids will worm their way into readers’ hearts without any trouble. If you enjoy books about families, food books, or middle grade books about road trips, this is the perfect book for you!

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I received an eARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

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