Blog Tour: The Heart of a Peach (Fox River Romance, #6) by Jess B.Moore @rararesources

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for The Heart of a Peach by Jess.B.Moore. Thank you to Rachel from Rachel’s Random Resources  for my place and for the opportunity to read this sweet romance.

Synopsis:

The Heart of a Peach

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.

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Review:
The Heart of a Peach is a sweet and wholesome romance set in a small town of Fox River. It follows the story of Olivia Hamilton who moved to the town six years ago and Denver MacKenna, the eldest of the five MacKenna brothers.

Olivia is soft-spoken and lady-like, she is a perfect daughter and future wife of Matthew Covington, the senator’s son. If there ever was a definition of low self-esteem, this is it. Olivia has been striving to live up to her parents’ ideas of perfection for so long that she doesn’t know who she is or what she really wants or likes. She tries to please her parents to make up for her past mistakes, she tries to charm her future-in-law who keeps piling on insults on Olivia’s head, she is afraid to disappoint her fiance who only cares for being able to show off her pretty face…Olivia’s been called prissy, dull, dim-witted, slow and somehow she still thinks it’s her fault for failing to be liked.

When Denver MacKenna hears Olivia sing, he is smitten by her beautiful voice. Denver is a music prodigy and one of the most famous citizens of Fox River. Music is his career, joy, happiness, family. It is his life. As a child he practised playing his fiddle for hours trying to get every note right. His mother taught him that striving for perfection stifles music and Denver saw this when he played with famous musicians who improvised and had fun on the stage. For Olivia, music is her freedom, a place where she doesn’t have to think hard how to please the others and can let herself be what she really is.

If you’ve been following the series, you already met the other MacKenna brothers and know how different their personalities are. Denver is quiet. When he was younger, he had no filter and sometimes his honesty offended people, so he learnt to become more measured with words. He knows Olivia is spoken for and he has no right to pursue her, although there’s nothing he would like more than to hear her sing again and perhaps persuade her to appear on his next album. After years of touring, he feels he is ready to settle down.

The Heart of a Peach is a character-driven romance and I was very happy to see how much development Olivia goes through in the book. We finally get to see that the soft peach has an inner core of strength. She always insisted on being able to meet with her friends (although at the age of 24, a woman shouldn’t even have to ask her parents or her fiance if she wants to go to a knitting group or have a coffee with her friends). I really liked the way her relationship with her mother grew into  something different, with more understanding and respect.

This is a simple and gentle story. There are very few negative characters in this book. They definitely do add to the drama and do not really have any redeeming qualities. As this is book 6, there are secondary stories whose stories were told in the previous books. Although it is possible to enjoy all of them as standalones, I would still recommend starting from the beginning if you want to get a good feel of what Fox River Town is really like.

I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys family drama, bluegrass music, coffee, and clean romance.

Thank you to Rachel from Rachel’s Random Resources and JesseB.Moore for the review copy. and letting me participate in this blog tour. All opinions are my own and were not influenced in any way.

Author Bio

Jess B. Moore is a writer of love stories. When she’s not writing, she’s busy mothering her accomplished and headstrong children, reading obscene numbers of books, and knitting scarves she’ll likely never finish.  

Jess lives in small town North Carolina with her bluegrass obsessed family. She takes too many pictures of her cats, thinking the Internet loves them as much as she does. She is a firm believer of swapping stories over coffee or wine, and that there should always be dark chocolate involved.  

The Fox River Romance novels combine her interests in family, music, and small towns into thoughtful tales of growing up and falling in love. These books can be read as stand-alone, or as a series starting with The Guilt of a Sparrow. 

Follow Jess on social media @authorjessb

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If you would like to check out what other bloggers thought of the book, here is the full tour schedule:

Thank you for stopping by and reading the post. Have a wonderful Wednesday!