Little Peach by Peggy Kern

Little Peach

by Peggy Kern

When Michelle runs away from her drug-addicted mother, she has just enough money to make it to New York City, where she hopes to move in with a friend. But once she arrives at the bustling Port Authority, she is confronted with the terrifying truth: she is alone and out of options. Then she meets Devon, a good-looking, well-dressed guy who emerges from the crowd armed with a kind smile, a place for her to stay, and eyes that seem to understand exactly how she feels. But Devon is not what he seems to be, and soon Michelle finds herself engulfed in the world of child prostitution where he becomes her Daddy and she his Little Peach. It is a world of impossible choices, where the line between love and abuse, captor and savior, is blurred beyond recognition. This hauntingly vivid story illustrates the human spirit s indomitable search for home, and one girl s struggle to survive.

Michelle runs away from her drug-addicted mother to New York City and finds herself engulfed in the world of child prostitution. The plot contains profanity, sexual references, and descriptions of physical abuse and sexual violence.

Reviewed by Leah on

5 of 5 stars

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After having a really rough time with books recently – and by rough, I mean books that are very, very serious I put a shout out on twitter asking for a light hearted read… Then I dived into my kindle and had a look at some of my new releases and started reading Little Peach, by Peggy Kern. Lemme tell you, it’s the hardest of all the books I’ve read recently, and it packs a bloody punch.

Little Peach is one of the shortest books I’ve read in ages – taking me just over an hour, but it’s heavy duty stuff. I’ve never read a book about teen prostitution before, and it’s sort of left me wide-eyed and terribly frightened for anyone suffering as Michelle did. And Kat. And Baby. It’s scary. It made me sick to my stomach when Baby said she was only 12 years old. Yuck. Just, yuck. I wanted to stop reading, almost as much as I didn’t want to stop reading.

What I liked is that Peggy Kern doesn’t sugarcoat stuff. The novel is upfront and honest, and dives right into the heart of the matter. Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. I rather appreciated the pace of the novel and the fact there’s no blathering and that Michelle is hardly old enough to know what Devon is doing to her, and so her narration is sickly sweet, and to the point. There’s no time for her to reconsider, because there’s nowhere else she can go – she only ended up in New York because her mom didn’t want her in Philly. No wonder she saw Devon as a safe haven!

It’s one of those novels that just leaves you a bit speechless, a bit flabbergasted. It’s hard to say I enjoyed it, but I did. I liked how we saw Michelle in the present, all beaten and broken, but determined to help herself if the lady with the card can help her, and then we flash back to how Michelle got into that predicament in the first place. It’s completely harrowing, and the authors note at the back doesn’t help at all, because sadly there are true stories about the Michelle’s, Kat’s and Baby’s of this world. It makes me want to weep forever, and ever and I applaud Peggy for writing such a brutal, honest novel. Little Peach is astounding, a must read for everyone, despite it’s horrific nature.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 30 July, 2014: Finished reading
  • 30 July, 2014: Reviewed