Review of “The Girl Who Loves Lemons” by Debbie Vehnekamp

Score: 92/100 (9.2 out of 10)

The Girl Who Loves Lemons is a very unique and charming children's book by Debbie Vehnekamp. It follows Courtney, a girl (and later a full-grown woman) who LOVES lemons!

Beyond just her love for lemons, this book is about the passage of time, sentimentality, and how, despite things changing and evolving, some things always stay the same—like the love for something as mundane and simple as lemons.

A love for dinosaurs. A love for fast cars. A love for soccer. A love for ice cream. A love for blueberries. These types of things are our “mainstays” or “anchors”—the things that we go back to in order to recapture a good feeling or to remind ourselves of who we are, where we've been, and what we've experienced. Call it nostalgia, perhaps.

So, this book is so much more than meets the eye!

Speaking of “meeting the eye,” the illustrations in this book are truly impressive! There's a real hand-drawn, hand-colored look to them. All of them are colorful, but not so colorful that they become distracting. They aren't shell-shaded (from we could tell) or AI generated, so there's a real sense of authenticity to them. The artist was very good at showing the different emotions and expressions on characters' faces.

The writing is also solid. Yes, it's slightly wordy and doesn't always flow perfectly, but it's grammatically correct and relatively easy to read.

There is a certain randomness and spontaneity to this book, skipping from thing to thing. On one page, the book is talking about Courtney, on another page you're getting random facts about lemons or tips on eating them. It kinda disrupts the flow of any coherent narrative, making it a little bit of a “beautiful mess.”

We can dig a beautiful mess! However, we wonder if the point of this book was to tell us about Courtney's life experiences or to teach us about lemons. It doesn't always flow and mesh well when we're constantly flip-flopping between what Courtney is doing and information about lemons.

At the same time, it has a certain charm and appeal that we appreciated.

Check it out on Amazon!