This review is of five books but in two series.
First up: The Great Peach Experiment series by Erin Soderberg Downing
This has two books:
When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Peach Pie and
The Peach Pit
The first book was okay. The second book was better in some ways and worse in others. To make my life easier, I’m just going to call the first book the Peach Pie book and the second book the Peach Pit book.
The Peach Pie book was a little slow. It was fun to see the small towns that the author put in the book, including some in my area. It’s not every day that a town you know gets put into a book like this. But other than that fun tidbit, it didn’t exactly capture my attention. It wasn’t bad, and nothing offensive, so there are worse ways to spend you time.
Which brings me to the Peach Pit book. There was a little more going on in this book, so it was a little better in that regard. But it has a nod to – how shall I say it – alternative lifestyles, so it is worse in that regard.
It seems my overall rating is going to be one sideways thumb.
Last up: The Storm Keeper’s Island series by Catherine Doyle
This has three books:
The Storm Keeper’s Island, The Lost Tide Warriors, and
The Storm Keeper’s Battle
The series was written as a series – i.e. when the first book ends it is not the end of the story so you can’t just enjoy the one book. In general, I dislike that trend, but I won’t count that too much against this series.
This series was certainly better for me than the Peach bilogy, but it didn’t capture my attention fully the way some books do. There was nothing bad or wrong with the books, although my kids did think it was a Harry Potter knockoff when I started describing the story to them.
Spoiler Alert
I told them it’s about a boy who doesn’t know he’s a wizard, and then he has to learn to become one and handle the magic he didn’t know was in him. And they asked a couple follow up questions, and for each one they asked, the answer could fit for either this book or Harry Potter. Sadly, I can’t remember any of them, and all the questions I could think of now in lieu of their questions do not apply to both sets of books.
End Spoiler Alert
Overall, I’d say one thumb’s up. If you need a fill a wintry weekend or something, you could do worse.
That’s it for this review. More book reviews coming up later this year.
Nevertheless, we must run aground on some island.
Acts 27:26
This is Alpha, the first-born, when he was 2YO.
This is Beta, the second-born, when he was about 2YO.
This is Gamma, the third-born, when he was about 18MO.
