Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit Review

Verdict: A warm, funny small-town first-love story that lets a Christian girl be gay without a crisis of faith, undercut by a deception plot that runs too long and a side character whose treatment a large share of critics call ableist.

Best for: Readers who want a sweet, low-heat sapphic YA romance where faith is treated with respect, and who can live with a heroine lying to the girl she loves for most of the book.

Heat level: ★★☆☆☆ (2/5 — no romance.io entry; a 14-and-up YA romance, frank but not graphic)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.5/5 — a 3.75 Goodreads average across 11,402 ratings, three starred trade reviews, and a low-star section dominated by one representation complaint)

Tropes: Forbidden love, back in the closet, preacher’s kid, new girl in a small town, secret relationship, slow burn, first love, faith and sexuality, blended family, found friends.

Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit by Jaye Robin Brown is a 2016 HarperTeen standalone — a contemporary young adult romance set in Rome, Georgia, where Jo Gordon, out and proud back in Atlanta, has promised her radio-evangelist father she will keep her head down for senior year, and then meets Mary Carlson, the one girl who makes that promise impossible to keep.

It has a 3.75 average across 11,402 Goodreads ratings, starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal, and a place on ALA’s 2017 Rainbow Book List. Ten years on, its reviews split along a line the trade coverage never touched. Both halves of that split are worth understanding before you start.

What Is Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit About?

Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit is a coming-of-age romance and a small-town story. Small town here means a Southern church town with a long memory, where a radio preacher’s family is public property and a new girl gets sorted on her first day. It is also, unusually for queer YA from this period, a book where the heroine’s Christianity is sincere rather than something she has to escape. Amazon files it under teen Christian relationship fiction, which tells you how seriously it takes that side.

Jo is missing her old life: her friends, her short hair, her name, and the ease of being known. Mary Carlson is the opposite case — rooted, well-liked, carefully presented, and holding more under the surface than her new friend expects. The book stays with Jo’s first-person narration throughout, which gives it a strong, funny voice. It also means you sit inside every lie Jo tells, and readers feel the weight of that.

What Makes This Sapphic YA Small-Town Romance Work

Faith without the war: The most-praised element. Reviewers keep naming the fact that Jo’s belief and her sexuality do not fight each other; Kirkus says the same, and PW calls faith central rather than an obstacle.
Jo’s voice: Readers who like it describe a funny, observant narrator, and a blogger who nearly quit at the halfway point still ranks it among the best voices they had read in years.
The sweetness: “Cute” and “sweet” recur through the positive reviews, and Amazon’s own summary of its 831 ratings lands on the same words. It is a forbidden-love story told gently.
The slow build: The romance takes its time, and the readers who love it treat that patience as the point.
A real town: Rome, Georgia reads as a place with its own rules, and one blogger says the town works almost as a character.

Book Synopsis

Joanna Gordon has spent years being exactly who she is. In Atlanta she had a loud, loyal crowd, a best friend who never lets her hide, and a father whose radio ministry somehow made room for a lesbian daughter. Then he marries again, and the new family’s roots are in Rome, Georgia — a smaller, more conservative town where his wife’s relatives, and his audience, would rather not know.

So her father asks for one thing. Lie low until graduation. Let people meet Joanna the preacher’s daughter before they meet Jo. In return he offers her a project she actually wants, and she agrees, partly for him and partly because a year of blending in does not sound that hard. She grows her hair out, joins a friend group, sits through their talk about boys, and finds that passing for straight is easier than she expected and lonelier than she can admit.

Then there is Mary Carlson. She belongs to the new circle, she is warm and quick and nothing like the town Jo had braced for, and the friendship between them starts to tilt into something else almost at once. Every step closer makes the promise harder to keep. Jo can break her word to her father, or she can let the first girl she really falls for believe a version of her that does not exist. The question is how long she can live on both sides of that line.

My Review

The best thing about this book is what it refuses to do. Jo is gay and she is a Christian, and Brown never asks her to choose. Ten years after publication that still feels unusual in YA, and it is why so many readers who grew up in church describe it as the book they needed. The faith is specific and lived-in — prayer, Sunday routines, a father whose work is preaching — and it is never the villain.

The second strength is Jo herself. Her narration is wry and quick, and the romance with Mary Carlson is built out of small, ordinary moments rather than grand gestures. Kirkus put its finger on it: the charm is that it feels so ordinary. StoryGraph readers back that up, with 75% saying the book has strong character development and 60% calling it character-driven.

Where it struggles is a problem the starred reviews never mention, and it is not a fringe gripe: it is the single most repeated objection in the low-star reviews. A supporting character with an intellectual disability, B.T.B., is, in those readers’ account, repeatedly belittled and treated as a burden, and nobody on the page pushes back. I counted it in 27 of the 60 one- and two-star Goodreads reviews I read, it heads the most popular review of the book, and StoryGraph’s crowd lists ableism as a graphic-level warning. Behind that sit three structural complaints. Jo lies to Mary Carlson for most of the book, and the deception drags. Her father’s request reads to many readers as performative acceptance. And a smaller but recurring group says Gemma, whom one reviewer calls the only Black character, is written as a caricature.

One expectation to reset: the cover, the title and the “forbidden fruit” framing suggest a light Southern rom-com. It is lighter than most books about religious homophobia, but at least one reader flags the last third as genuinely hard going, and StoryGraph lists homophobia and religious bigotry as graphic. If you came for fluff, calibrate. If “preacher’s kid” worried you, relax — the book is on the side of faith and of Jo.

My honest note: A genuinely kind book about faith and first love, with blind spots that a lot of readers could not get past. If the treatment of a disabled side character will ruin a book for you, believe the reviewers who say it did for them. If you can read with that in view, Jo and Mary Carlson are worth the time.

Element	In Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit
Central relationship	Jo Gordon & Mary Carlson — out preacher’s daughter back in the closet, and the small-town girl she falls for
Core tropes	Forbidden love, back in the closet, secret relationship, slow burn, first love, faith and sexuality
Setting	Rome, Georgia — a conservative Southern church town, senior year of high school
Heat level	2/5 — 14-and-up YA; frank but not graphic
Series	Standalone — happy ending for the couple
Content notes	Homophobia and religious bigotry, ableism, lesbophobia, bullying, pregnancy and miscarriage, death of a parent, alcohol

How Spicy Is Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit?

A 2/5. romance.io has no entry for it, which is normal for young adult titles and tells you the book is not being catalogued as adult romance at all. The number comes from two places instead. The publisher pitches it at 14 and up, and Kirkus notes that sex, drinking and swearing are written about frankly, without glamour or a lecture. No reader review I found describes anything explicit, and StoryGraph’s crowd-sourced warnings list no sexual content at all.

The one thing worth knowing in advance is that this is a book about teenagers who talk about sex, including Jo’s straight friends, more than it shows it. One reader notes Brown’s books always turn out less tame than she expects, and that is fair, but the romance runs on kisses, longing and secrecy. For the same low register, Last Night at the Telegraph Club sits at 2/5 and She Drives Me Crazy is closed door.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you want a sapphic book where faith is a comfort and not an enemy, you like a funny first-person narrator, you enjoy a slow, sweet build over high drama, and you want a happy ending for two girls in the South.

You may want to skip it if: careless disability representation will sour a whole book for you, a love story built on months of lying frustrates you, a parent asking a gay kid to hide is a dealbreaker, or you need tight pacing across 437 pages.

In short: a big-hearted book about faith and first love, with blind spots its fans and critics will both tell you about.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (October 2026)

This is a backlist title, and nothing about it is new. I found no current BookTok wave around it, and I could not reach Reddit at all during this sweep. What it has is staying power: 11,402 Goodreads ratings and 1,514 written reviews, 4,303 StoryGraph ratings at 3.62, 4.4 stars from 831 Amazon ratings, a Kirkus starred review and a Kirkus Best Book of the Year listing, starred PW and SLJ reviews, and the ALA Rainbow List. Its long tail runs through libraries and through readers who recommend it as the Christian lesbian YA book they wish they had had as teenagers. Tantor released an audiobook in 2019, narrated by Amanda Dolan, which runs 9 hours 12 minutes; I found no listener commentary on the narration specifically. StoryGraph’s did-not-finish rate is just 2%, which is low, so the people who object mostly finish the book before they object.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The faith-and-sexuality balance first. That is what the trade reviews lead with and what fans name most, and PW’s line sums it up: “Faith matters in this book, but so do family, friends, and being funny.” Then the sweetness — “cute” is the recurring word, and “emotional” and “hopeful” are StoryGraph’s top moods at 70% and 59%. Jo’s voice draws real affection, and at least one reader calls Jo and Mary Carlson the best f/f couple they have met in YA. Notably, the readers who praise the writing are directly contradicted by low-star readers who find the teen slang dated or misused, so the voice is a matter of taste.

What readers argue about and complain about: Ableism, above everything. In 27 of the 60 one- and two-star reviews I read, readers object to how B.T.B., a character with an intellectual disability, is talked about and treated. Several DNF over it, and one blogger lowered her own rating after reading a critique of it. The second theme is the father. A recurring group of readers find it hard to believe an accepting parent would ask his daughter to hide, and they wanted more of an apology than the book gives him. Third: the lie. Jo deceives Mary Carlson for most of the novel, the deception stretches the middle, and some say Mary Carlson forgives it too easily. Beyond that are recurring notes on Gemma’s portrayal, dated slang, and a fast, convenient ending in which the town’s opponents come round quickly. At least one reader also flags biphobic comments. Opinions divide on the closet premise itself: some call it painful but honest, and others say they should have trusted their unease about it.

The standalone question worth asking first: It is a standalone and it resolves, with Jo and Mary Carlson together at the end. If you want more Brown, note that this is her most-read book by a distance. The Meaning of Birds actually rates higher at 3.88 across about 2,400 ratings, while No Place to Fall (3.62) and The Key to You and Me (3.35) sit lower.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit have a happy ending?

Yes. Jo and Mary Carlson end up together and the book closes on a hopeful note. At least one reader thinks the town’s change of heart comes too quickly and conveniently.

How spicy is Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit?

A 2/5. It is a 14-and-up YA novel with no romance.io entry, and Kirkus says sex is discussed frankly but not glamorized. No reviewer describes explicit scenes.

Is Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit a Christian book?

Partly. Jo is a believer, her father is a radio evangelist, and Amazon shelves it in teen Christian relationship fiction. Faith is treated with respect, but the book also depicts religious homophobia that StoryGraph readers rate as graphic.

Is Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit part of a series?

No. It is a standalone published by HarperTeen in 2016, and the story is complete in one book.

Is there an audiobook?

Yes. Tantor Media released it in 2019, narrated by Amanda Dolan, with a runtime of 9 hours 12 minutes.

If You Loved Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit, Read These Next

The closest match is I Kissed Shara Wheeler, which takes the same Southern Christian school setting and a closeted girl and plays it for comedy and mystery. She Drives Me Crazy keeps the small Southern town and the low heat but swaps faith for a rom-com setup. And Last Night at the Telegraph Club takes the hiding-who-you-are premise back to 1950s San Francisco with far higher stakes.

For more in this register, browse our full list of lesbian YA books or the complete Book Reviews collection.

The Bottom Line

Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit wants to prove a gay girl can keep her faith, her family and her first love, and for a lot of readers it does exactly that. The faith is treated with dignity, Jo’s voice is warm and funny, and the romance is sweet. It is also built on a lie that runs too long, it lets a father’s request off lightly, and it treats a disabled side character in a way that nearly half the critical reviews I read could not forgive. It is worth it for readers who want a hopeful sapphic story set inside the church rather than against it, as long as they go in knowing about its blind spots. Check Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit ranks as a landmark faith-positive sapphic YA romance — tender and funny, held back by a dated, ableist blind spot and an overlong deception, and best approached for Jo’s faith and first love rather than as a model of inclusive representation.