Spring Clean for the Peach Queen in Aussie Readers

Feb 19, 2024 Catsalive rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2024

A very enjoyable book set in rural Australia, focussing mainly on family.

Charlotte "Lottie" Bentz, career-name Charlize Beste, returns to Bonnievale after a scandal affects her acting career in the city. Her mother can hardly bear to look at her so she goes to stay with the Brookers on their peach farm, helping out where she can, & learning to live a more genuine life. She certainly could have done with some support & counselling, I think. I love Mrs Brooker's reaction to the "condor" method of ...more

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Jul 17, 2024 Rhoda rated it really liked it

When Lottie was 18 she was crowned the Peach Queen in her hometown of Bonnievale (inspired by Donnybrook in Western Australia). Twelve years later Lottie is returning to the town she left just after her crowning with her tail between her legs. Her career has taken a nosedive, her boyfriend is dead and a badly timed topless photo shoot has just gone public.

Back in her hometown, with her mother barely speaking to her, Lottie moves into a caravan on a family friend’s orchard and undertakes a radic ...more

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May 01, 2021 Jenny (Bookbookowl) rated it it was amazing

Thank you to Pantera Press for providing me with a copy of this book, in exchange for an honest review!

Lottie has slunk back to her small home town from her city acting career, after a media disaster, involving a friend’s fatal overdose and a topless magazine shoot. She’s determined to get rid of everything in her life that is fake and encourages lying – her acting career, her obsession with her looks, social media, her phone and even her beloved nail polish collection. Her mother is furious wit Thank you to Pantera Press for providing me with a copy of this book, in exchange for an honest review!

Lottie has slunk back to her small home town from her city acting career, after a media disaster, involving a friend’s fatal overdose and a topless magazine shoot. She’s determined to get rid of everything in her life that is fake and encourages lying – her acting career, her obsession with her looks, social media, her phone and even her beloved nail polish collection. Her mother is furious with her though and refuses to have anything to do with Lottie. With little other options, she moves into a dilapidated caravan on the Brooker peach farm, where Mrs Brooker and her son, Angus (an old school friend of Lottie’s) live. As Lottie helps out around the farm, to earn her keep, she teaches Mrs Brooker the Kondor decluttering method. But Mrs Brooker also teaches her how the method of working out what sparks joy should really work.

When the publisher contacted me to ask if I would consider reading Spring Clean for the Peach Queen, I said it wasn’t my usual genre, but I’d give it a try since it was set in Perth, where I live. So I’d just like to officially kick myself in the pants for even thinking I might not enjoy this book. It was AMAZING! Ahh I loved it so much! I laughed and cried on multiple occasions. The characters were utterly brilliant and the story was both fun and heart wrenching. Even the side characters were unforgettable. There were some seriously relatable comments about social media in here for me too. “It doesn’t end. You’re always chasing, never satisfied. Running a race you can never win because there’s always someone bigger, more sought-after, more followed, more popular.” “There’s no summit. You get to the top and you see another mountain to climb” ..

Did this book also make me start spring cleaning my house with the (loosely) Kondor method? Yes. (However, I did since discover you should not try this method with a 4 year old. A ripped piece of paper with an indistinct scribble on it? SPARKS JOY for them. Apparently 🤨😂).

Please do yourself a favour and check this book out! It’s such a perfect, easy, Aussie read. ...more

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May 28, 2021 Bree T rated it it was amazing

Shelves: arc, australian, rural-lit, romance, aww2021

I absolutely loved this book.

Lottie (known as Charlize in her city acting life) is back in her hometown, reassessing her whole life. She was caught up in a terrible incident and the fallout has been invasive in the press and now Lottie isn’t sure what she wants to do but she thinks she’s done with acting. She was the last Peach Queen in her hometown and she finds herself on the committee to stage the event again, after a 12 year gap.

There’s just so much about this that I loved – Mrs B! The moth I absolutely loved this book.

Lottie (known as Charlize in her city acting life) is back in her hometown, reassessing her whole life. She was caught up in a terrible incident and the fallout has been invasive in the press and now Lottie isn’t sure what she wants to do but she thinks she’s done with acting. She was the last Peach Queen in her hometown and she finds herself on the committee to stage the event again, after a 12 year gap.

There’s just so much about this that I loved – Mrs B! The mother of Angus, who was the Peach King to Lottie’s Peach Queen, who opens her home to Lottie when she feels she cannot live at home, due to discord with her staunchly feminist mother, who doesn’t approve of a lot of Lottie’s choices. I loved the way Lottie and Mrs B developed this beautiful rapport, bonding over the art of tidying up. In Mrs B, Lottie finds true acceptance of who she is and the space to work through the ‘list’ she has created of things she wants to change or cut from her life. I saw what was happening to Mrs B before Lottie does but I thought the whole way it played out felt so realistic, especially from the points of view of Angus, her son and Lottie.

Ah Angus. I loved Angus and Lottie too. I felt like they had so much chemistry – it’s a slow burn, both Lottie and Angus have had things happen that make them gun-shy. Angus has some hang ups and has made some vows and Lottie isn’t sure what she really wants or where she’ll be in the future. But they find common ground a lot and I really loved the way Lottie’s presence definitely gives Angus some sleepless nights about his “policy” and the fact that sometimes, he really cannot hide how much he’s into her and how conflicted he is. Angus has buried a lot deep down but he feels he can be himself around Lottie, he likes her “no faking, no lying” vow and I appreciate the things they tell each other, the lack of artifice.

Lottie has a really difficult relationship with her mother, who always tends to be quite judgemental of her choices, especially one posing for a magazine. I really felt for Lottie, every time she felt the brunt of her mother’s snubbing of her after she returned to town. It was so uncomfortable at her family home that she took up an offer to basically stay in a decrepit caravan, because it was more welcoming. I think in the end the two of them did come to an understanding about each other but yeah, I still really felt for Lottie for a lot of the book because it’s obvious she’s quite upset at the broken relationship and that she feels like she can’t really do a lot to repair it and that it has to come from her mother, when her mother is ready.

This one has definitely earned a spot on my favourites shelf and I can see myself re-reading it in the future. I’ve really like Sasha Wasley’s other books too so she’s definitely an autoread author for me.

***A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for the purpose of an honest review*** ...more

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May 24, 2021 Janine rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobooks

So great to see a new book by Sasha Wasley and a slight deviation from her previous titles.
Lottie returns home to Bonnievale after a fall from grace after a one night stand virtually ends her acting career. She decides to rid herself of everything negative in her life and go back to grass roots.
She was the last Peach Queen when she was 18 in the annual Harvest Ball that Bonnievale held.

She decides to take up the offer of kind Mrs Brooker to live in her caravan after her mother tells her she is n ...more

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