Grief is a complex and intense emotion that can last for months or years and shows itself in endless forms. People react to grief in their own unique ways, and there is no right or wrong way to grieve. For the characters in Lemons, each is grieving their own losses in their own ways. Lemonade’s grief is the focus of the novel and of her growth as a character.

Within days of arriving in Willow Creek, Lemonade begins learning things about her mother that she never knew: “It feels weird to hear about Mama this way. It’s like I thought I knew her better than anyone in the whole entire world, and now I find out I don’t know lots of things about her” (32). The feeling is unsettling at first, but it isn’t long before these memories become a source of comfort instead. Lemonade does not want to lose her connection to her mother and keeps it by repeating her name, striving to live up to her own name that her mother gave her, and asking questions about how her mother used to be. She discovers one of her mother’s old toys, a precious stuffed rabbit, and puts it on her bed.