The Peach Thief by Linda Joan Smith
Published by Candlewick Press on March 4, 2025
ISBN: 1536237787
Genres: Adventure, Historical Fiction
Format: Chapter Book Fiction
Source: MSL Book Review
Goodreads

Scilla, a hungry and desperate workhouse orphan, risks sneaking into an earl’s walled garden to get a peach. Caught and mistaken for a boy, she’s given a job washing garden pots to work off her crime. Finding the food better and the bed softer than she’s ever had, Scilla hopes to stay. She learns about gardening and discovers she has a passion for it, but unfortunately she cannot pass as a boy forever. The situation is complicated by a handsome, young troublemaker,  a housekeeper from India, and the head gardener, and others. Beautiful, detailed descriptions of an 1850s English estate and its gardens.

(I have not yet finished this book so may adjust my opinion after I have finished it.)

Barb Rehmeyer, Liberty Library