This guest review is from Danielle Fritz. Danielle is a former librarian who has a special affection for children’s lit and books about the funeral industry. She first cut her criticism teeth as a fanfic writer. A resident of the upper midwest, she’s learned to love beer and tater tot casserole and tolerate long winters. Most nights will find her cuddled up with her pups and wearing out her wrists with yet another crochet project.
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After helping a mysterious runaway evade capture, outcast Anna finds herself burning on a pyre in the center of her village. It’s England in 1185 and the marks on her skin have already made her a blight in the eyes of her community. Her merciful aid gives them just another reason to set her ablaze.
But Anna doesn’t burn. Instead she rises from the ashes and is guided away by the very person who’d gotten into this mess in the first place. The runaway is Khiran, a god, and he’s rewarded — or cursed, depending on your perspective — her with immortality. And then he promptly dumps her off at the home of another godlike being, Eira.
Eira reminds me a bit of a green witch, as she inhabits a sort of garden-y liminal space, appearing to heal the occasional mortal. A sucker for lost souls, she quickly takes Anna on as her apprentice. Eira tends to anyone who happens across her cottage, offering tinctures and setting broken bones at no cost and with great kindness. She teaches Anna healing, which ultimately becomes how Anna supports herself over the centuries. I found it really appealing that the biggest source of Anna’s recovery from her trauma was this mentorship. It empowered Anna with the ability to help others, and gives her the tools she needs to help herself. Even after Eira pushes Anna out of the nest, so to speak, Anna reflects on Eira’s wisdom and longs for her perspective.
The majority of the story is told through vignettes of Anna’s life through the centuries, with most chapters placing her different time and place. I appreciated the fact that despite these massive shifts the story is told chronologically. I don’t mind shifts in timeline as a method of framing a story, but I think the decision to stick to chronological order gives insight into how cyclical humanity can be. Particularly around war. Anna finds herself amidst historic time periods (though not largely influencing them) such as Colonial America, a French hospital nursing English soldiers in WWI, hiding formerly enslaved folks on the Underground Railroad, or watching book burnings in Berlin. As a history buff I enjoyed these “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego” snippets. There were moments when I felt like that one meme of Leonardo DiCaprio from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood where he’s excited pointing at a TV. “Omg, it’s the return of the Magellan expedition to Spain!” And who doesn’t love feeling like that?
Despite some of these large jumps in setting, each unique place was set up pretty swiftly. There was no waxing poetic about the mist-ridden trenches or prolonged observations about the stifling Louisiana heat. It was a good economy of words, well-executed enough to establish where and when in the world she was, while never letting the plot’s pacing falter.
What could’ve used some expansion were the specific locations where we follow Anna. Khiran even points out how most of Anna’s immortality has been spent in Europe and the Americas when he finds her on a ship in the South China Sea where she’s serving Ching Shih, the infamous lady pirate. But that’s the single glimpse of Anna making a life for herself beyond the West for the whole book. I would have enjoyed more diversity in these settings, though I still enjoyed the variety we see in the text.
Time and time again Anna is forced to move on before she’s ready when people catch sight of the scar-like marks on her skin that had frightened the community where she grew up (which is vitiligo according to the publisher’s summary, not what I would have guessed given than it’s also compared to leprosy). Otherwise, she moves frequently to avoid people noting her lack of aging (a la the Cullen family), or to offer her support as a healer. This last driver is what sends her into the midst of war zones and what seems to get Khiran’s attention more often than not.
Anna’s determination to help others never came across as saccharine, which I sometimes find with characters whose motivations center around doing good. She’s at times reckless, testing the limits of her immortality, leaping into a fray to help another. Khiran shows up several times in these moments to bail her out of trouble, exasperated and fiercely protective. Then he interferes with a bomb in the French hospital where she’s tending to injured troops. After saving Anna in this instance, he bleakly implies his meddling will likely see him — or perhaps them both — punished. More on this shortly.
Throughout the first half of the book Khiran popped up only on occasion, always in a new face, enigmatic and wry. His powers are never fully expanded upon, but we do see him shift between new faces and bodies every time he shows up. Yet Anna manages to recognize him every time, which of course made me swoon. Be it two energies reaching out to one another or soulmates or something, I love the “I’ll-always-know-it’s-you” trope.
Romantic fantasies tend to present mysterious, brooding male love interests who are enigmatic, overpowered, and ancient. Khiran is all of these things but he’s got a smidge more humor about him that quickly won me over. He’s not parental in view of the mortals he encounters, and is more respectful than similar heroes in the genre. There are still moments when he makes decisions for Anna — such as giving her immortality — that speak to a feeling of innate superiority. Most of these choices are made to ultimately protect Anna or prevent some larger ramifications to which he vaguely alludes. They’re never so unforgivable to make me loathe him, and I get the sense they’re seeds that will bloom in the next book as a point of growth between the couple.
It takes over 700 years for Anna and Khiran to kiss. That might be agony for some readers. I love a slow burn, and for me this one was very well paced despite the seven centuries. It becomes clear over time Khiran’s erratic entrance and exit from Anna’s life is a means of protection, a method of keeping her shielded from a power higher than himself that would use her as leverage against him. But it is just as clear that he struggles to stay away, and over time his visits pick up until he’s a fixture in Anna’s life.
Despite being a duology, I finished the first book feeling satisfied not agonized with the knowledge that I’d be awaiting the next book. A book series with elaborate overarching plots are something I’ve started avoiding — I’m just not that ambitious these days, there’s just so many other things filling my brain, and the notion of maintaining the threads of plot in my memory makes me tired. This was the first time in years that I’ve turned past the final pages of text to see a “the story continues in…” and not felt exhaustion at the mere thought. The story closes with something closer to a “happy-for-now” rather than cliffhanger, which was another relief.
It’s inevitable that this book is going to be compared to The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by V.E. Schwab. And I’ll agree, there are some pretty significant similarities and if you enjoyed one you’d probably like the other. But Peaches & Honey is its own creation with its own ethos and goals, and therefore is successful in its own way.
I know that this book is an A for me because for several weeks after reading I was replaying scenes in my head and mulling over the remaining mysteries. In my experience, books linger in my mind for two reasons: either they were brilliant or stunningly bad. Peaches & Honey proved to be the stay-up-past-your-bedtime-to-finish kind of good that was refreshing after a long reading slump. I pre-ordered the next title in the duology and it’s been waiting in my “currently read” folder on my kindle, immediately bypassing the “priority to-read” and “to read” status (what, you don’t organize your ebooks into hyper-specific folders?).
If you’re on the hunt for a romantasy slow burn that’s not overly dark, pretty mild on the chili peppers, and isn’t going to string you along for a massive series, consider diving into this duology.
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