#CBR10 Book 87: "The Dud Avocado" by Elaine Dundy

Page count: 260 pages
Rating: 2 stars

#CBR10Bingo: AlabamaPink

Sally Jay Gorce is a young woman of independent means, thanks to the benevolence of a rich uncle. He's given her enough money to live comfortably abroad for two whole years, no strings attached, as long as she comes back and tells him about her adventures at the end of the two years. Not needing to hold down a job or really do anything at all for the money, means Sally Jay spends her time flitting about Paris, taking a lover, drinking and partying. When her older diplomat lover starts getting a bit too demanding, she convinces herself that she's in love with an acquaintance from back home, who directs plays.

The Cannonball Read is founded in memory of AlabamaPink, who back in 2008 was going to compete with her friend Prisco to be the first to read and review 100 books in a year. Sadly, struck down by cancer, AlabamaPink only managed to review eleven books before she died. One of the books is the upcoming November book club selection for the CBR book club, giving participants in the CBR10Bingo a selection of ten other books to read and review for this square. I have purposefully not looked at her review of the book, but picked this as it didn't seem too long and seemed fairly critically acclaimed.

If I'm to believe Goodreads, this book is a cult hit, and described as charming, sexy and hilarious. Groucho Marx wrote Ms Dundy an enthusiastic fan letter. All I can say is that book reviewers in the late 1950s and I have very different opinions about what those adjectives mean. I suppose a young, unmarried woman in the late 50s being frank and open about her sexuality, not hiding the fact that she enjoys it and having casual flings like a male protagonist would was unusual and refreshing.

Nothing much of anything actually happens in the book. In many ways it reminded me of The Catcher in the Rye, although Sally Jay, while frustrating on occasion, is approximately a million times more engaging and enjoyable to read about than stupid, self-important Holden Caulfield. Still, both books are about a young protagonist just going about their life, not really much of anything happening. To get through both books, I had to resort to skimming passages after a while. Despite being relatively short, the book took me nearly two weeks to get through.

Having now looked over AlabamaPink's review, it is clear she liked it A LOT more than I, and we have extremely different tastes in books. It certainly makes me more wary about the next book of "hers", I'll have to read - Craig Ferguson's novel.

Judging a book by its cover: Didn't like the book all that much and I think the cover is dull. A naked, young woman looking up at the camera - all her naughty bits tastefully covered by either her or the avocado green (I see what they did there) square with the title and author's name. I suppose the woman's open gaze is supposed to connect with the reader or some such? It's just not very interesting, much like the book it belongs to.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR9 Book 34: "Trust Me" by Laura Florand

Page count: 274 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

This is the third book in a trilogy, and while you can read each of these books completely independently of each other, this book references an pretty significant event in the previous book, Chase Me, and readers who want more details may want to check that book out first (it's also the better romance of the two). Be aware that I spoil part of the plot of that one in the very first paragraph of this review, though.

Lina Farah has had to fight her entire life, to prove her worth and make it in a deeply competitive business. At the age of 26, she is the top pastry chef at a two star Michelin restaurant and she can hold her own against anyone who wants to go up against her. When a Muslim extremist cousin of hers attacks the restaurant where she and her best friends work and try to kill them all, Lina didn't hesitate to defend her loved ones. Throwing the liquid nitrogen she was working with at the terrorists, she helped make sure that no one was lethally hurt and the guilty parties were brought to justice quickly. Now she's been questioned by not only the police, but a number of French and American security operatives. As a Muslim woman, with a family connection to the main terrorist, Lina is worried that they may suspect her as well. Why else would one of the burly special ops guys take it upon himself to follow her around, observing her every move?

Seeing her very best friend (and said friend's new lover) injured and hospitalised, while she herself escaped unscathed, is not easy for Lina, and with their restaurant closed, she's going a bit stir crazy. She's working on ice sculpting with a chain saw to work off stress, but most of the time ends up decapitating the ice dragons she's trying to create. She has always been proud of her resilience and self-sufficiency, now she is scared of every shadow and sudden noise. Having a silent, six-foot, be-freckled ginger escort, who may or may not be trying to prove she has terrorist leanings, is not making her rest easier.

Special forces operative Jake Adams has been a soldier for a long time, and seen some pretty scary situations. He first laid eyes on Lina Farah when the woman acted with grace under (literal gun-) fire and threw liquid nitrogen at her cousin. As all the restaurant staff now get security escorts for the next six months, in case they draw the ire of other extremists, he takes it upon himself to guard Lina. Having never really stayed in one place for very long, and having seen first-hand more than once what a secret agent life like his can do to long-term relationships, he's never really had more than causal hook-ups and for a long time, he enjoyed himself a lot. Now, after all these years, Jake is getting ready for something more serious and permanent, and so when Lina approaches him and proposes a short-term hook-up to help her deal with her PTSD, he is actually rather hurt, having wanted to be more than used for his body with this formidable woman that he's so come to admire.

There is very little outside conflict in this book, just Lina having to deal with the aftermath of the brutal attack that left her physically unharmed, but deeply emotionally scarred. She hates being afraid and unable to sleep through the night. She hates seeing her best friend in a hospital bed and tries to deal with her fears by beating them into submission, and by creating new and wonderful dessert creations for Violette, Chase and the assorted special ops guys in Chase and Jake's crew, who all seem to congregate at the hospital every day.

Jake, while he's a big and capable soldier, who as an army sniper has dealt death to countless people all over the world, in missions he can't ever tell anyone about, is clearly a protector, and more of a beta hero than an alpha. While Chase was all loud, brash self-confidence and macho bravado in the previous book, Jake is a much more quiet and laid-back guy. He's also a lot more insecure on how to actually approach a woman he cares about, in large part because he's used to women throwing themselves at him and his team mates every time they go out - he's never had to work to impress someone. Now that he's mightily sick of one-night stands and being used for his hot body, he wants to connect with Lina, and he's at a bit of a loss as to how to do it. That Lina herself is adamant that she prefers "shy, nerdy guys" doesn't help, nor does the fact that most of Jake's team mates do their best to charm Lina as well, at least until he makes it very clear that he's not just flirting, but deadly serious about her.

While there is a lot to like in this book, it's also a bit slow and much of the early part of the book, before Lina and Jake really start to communicate properly with each other is rather frustrating. I liked the second part of the book a lot better, and I am very glad that Florand chose to have a Muslim heroine, making her strong, capable, intelligent and driven, as diversity and representation is so very important and I can't recall coming across all that many Muslim heroines (or heroes, for that matter) in my books.

I continue to enjoy Florand's contemporaries and while this isn't one of her best books, she's still more than entertaining enough that I don't regret my pre-order of this. There's still a whole bunch of Chase and Jake's team mates who can find love in future books and I look forward to their stories (especially if they involve food in some way - Florand writes about food and cooking in a marvellous way). I always want to re-visit Paris and eat myself sick when I've finished one of these novels. TL, DR - not one of her top efforts, but very enjoyable nonetheless and extra points for a Muslim heroine.

Judging a book by its cover: I know that Laura Florand self-publishes these, but still think she could have found a better stock photo to use for the cover. While at one point in the story, Lina does wear a hat to go out, this whole silly, dragging it into her eyes fits badly with the contents of the book, giving a much more light-hearted and frivolous impression than the story warrants. I also don't think the cover model appears much like the descriptions of Lina in the book.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

#CBR8 Book 42: "Chase Me" by Laura Florand

Page count: 246 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Violette Lenoir is twenty-eight and a two-star Michelin chef in her own restaurant. Don't worry if you don't remember that, you will be reminded at least five times over the course of the narrative. Of course, she has every right to be proud, having worked her ass off in kitchens since she was fifteen, fighting sexism and discrimination every step of the way to prove herself. When a stranger breaks into her restaurant late at night, as she's about to leave, she's not intimidated in the slightest, and doesn't hesitate to show him that she can take care of herself.

Chase Smith (very much not his real name) is on a black-ops counter-terrorism mission in Paris. They suspect that someone may be planning a ricin attack, using Violette's restaurant and he needs to investigate how easy it would be for a stranger to get access to the kitchens, as well as distract the stunning blonde who's throwing knives at him. It's pretty much love at first sight for Chase, and he feels extremely bad about the fact that to save her life and that of countless others, he and his team will most likely ruin her life, at least short term. Because when Violette shows up to work after taking the fast-talking and very handsome American "security consultant" home for what she planned to be a one night stand, she discovers that someone has shut it down, claiming a salmonella outbreak originated there.

Violette's reputation, already shaky as a young female chef in a severely male-dominated and cut-throat profession, is possibly destroyed forever, and she KNOWS that the mysterious Chase had something to do with it. So when she meets him again, she punches him, promptly fracturing her hand in the process. Chase feels extremely guilty about his operation shutting down her restaurant (not that it wasn't absolutely necessary to save lives), and what is worse, he can't breathe a word about it, having to continue the fiction about being a private security consultant, even though they both know it's untrue. After a hell of a meet-cute, their fledgling relationship has a hell of a complication to work through on the road to their HEA.

Violette and Chase are both extremely skilled at what they do. Both are completely devoted to their chosen careers, to the point where any romantic relationships they've attempted in the past have never made it past the initial first dates. Violette is used to men being put off by her self-confidence, long work hours, her need to be in control and frankly, intimidated by (and possibly jealous of) her success. Chase is a black-ops soldier, used to shipping off for months on end, working on missions he can't tell even those closest to him about, in areas where people are most likely trying to kill him and his friends. He puts his life on the line to keep people safe and even when he's on leave, he's used to living a double life. He's a very dangerous man, which doesn't mean that he doesn't want a partner to share his life with at some point, maybe even children.

Chase actually proposes marriage to Violette the first evening they meet, after she's thrown not one, but two knives towards him. Violette is a passionate woman, who will frequently fling things at Chase when she's provoked, knowing full well that he can handle it, while he finds it adorable and tries to rile her up as often as possible. Understanding very quickly that Violette enjoys being in a temper, he keeps saying and doing outrageous things just to see how she'll react. He's physically so much bigger and stronger than her, but never uses it to dominate or threaten her. Being a soldier, he's used to compartmentalising his emotions, having to shut certain parts off when he's on a mission, possibly needing to kill people. Nonetheless, with each new encounter with Violette, he feels the softer sides of his emotions leaking out.

Florand writes excellent banter, and at her best, she writes such entertaining romances. It's always fun reading about people who are extremely good at what they do. Confidence and skill is attractive and I like that both Violette and Chase are very secure in their own skins and supremely certain that they are bad-asses in their own fields, without becoming overbearing or insufferably arrogant about it. This book was initially meant to be a lot more frothy, but took on a darker note after the various terrorist attacks in Paris and other parts of Europe in the last six months. The counter-terrorism plot was supposed to be more in the background than it is now, but I don't think the added levels of real-world relevance in any way damages the story.

More often than not, I really enjoy Florand's books and there is more than enough sequel-bait set up over the course of this story. Florand has promised that Violette's friend Lena, as well as several of Chase's army buddies will have stories of their own in future books. So that's something to look forward to.

Judging a book by its cover: The cover here isn't particularly remarkable. The Eiffel Tower features in the background, because how else would you possibly know the book was set in Paris? To be fair, there is in fact a scene in the book that involves Vi and Chase looking at the Tower, so it's not entirely out of place. The woman on the cover is attractive and blond, so fits the description of Violette. Both her boots and jacket are leather, which again fits with the contents of the book. As romance covers go, it's not particularly exciting, but it's certainly not as egregiously bad as they sometimes are either.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR6 Book 98: "Isla and the Happily Ever After" by Stephanie Perkins

Page count: 352 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Isla has been in love with Josh since their first year together at the American boarding school in Paris, but he's been unattainable for most of her time there. Instead she's been pining for him from a distance, hanging out with her platonic BFF Kurt (who has Aspergers' Syndrome). Now in their final year together, it looks as if all of Isla's dreams are coming true. Josh not only notices her, he wants to be her boyfriend! True love's path doesn't exactly run smoothly though, and when Josh gets expelled and sent back to New York, Isla and Josh discover that they're really going to have to fight for their Happily Ever After.

This is the final book in the Anna and the French Kiss trilogy. All three books can easily be read without any prior knowledge of the other books, but this book may be more satisfying if you've read at the other two, as the main characters show up as supporting cast during parts of the story.

The son of a successful senator and an aspiring graphic novelist, Josh Wasserman isn't really happy at his posh boarding school in Paris (I really want to smack all these ingrate kids who don't realise how good they have it). As a result, he's been acting out a lot over the years, which comes to a head after he convinces Isla to break school rules and go to Barcelona with him for a few days. As she's got a fairly spotless record, she just gets a month's detention, but he is fetched home by his furious mother.

Isla is very smart, but clearly deeply insecure about her relationship to Josh. She's a very good friend to Kurt, but she can be quite self-centred at times, and while she's very close to her older sister, she clearly pretty much completely ignores and/or underestimates her younger sister for much of the book. While Josh has all sorts of hopes and dreams for the future, Isla keeps working for that perfect grade point average, but doesn't actually have any idea what she wants to do with her future. She is entirely directionless and it scares her. She's also completely convinced that she's not really worth loving and when things start getting tough between her and Josh, she seems to think that sabotaging the relationship before things get more difficult is the way to go. Silly girl.

Of all of Perkins' heroines, Isla is probably the one with the most character growth over the course of the story (and all three girls do a fair bit of growing up) and she discovers that in order to have a proper HEA, she doesn't just need to make things right with Josh, but make herself happy in other areas of her life. While Isla has a very close friendship with Kurt, she clearly underestimates his ability to socialise with others and has to face up to the harsh truth that she may be the reason they have very few friends at school, not Kurt and his Aspergers'. The reason her younger sister is such a brat may be because Isla never takes her even a little bit seriously.

Josh is sweet, but he can't compete with Cricket as my favourite of Perkins' heroes. I also found his way of dealing with his dissatisfaction with school annoying. His parents really don't seem like bad people and it seemed strange to me that he didn't try to communicate with them more, but then, he is a teenager, and they are not always rational or sensible.

What I do like about the book is that it really does show both sides of a relationship, not just the happy flush of first love and infatuation, but that some couples really have to work to find lasting happiness and long distance relationships are not just fun and games. I will keep an eye out for Perkins' next book and hope it's as good as her first three.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR5 Book 126. "Anna and the French Kiss" by Stephanie Perkins

Page count: 386 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Anna Oliphant doesn't want to go to school in Paris. She's not sure why her father (who basically seems to be a thinly veiled parody of Nicholas Sparks) has enrolled her in a boarding school there. She had perfectly nice life in Atlanta with her mum and little brother, a great best friend, a very promising crush on one of the guys she works with at the local multiplex. Now she's a continent away from everyone she loves, surrounded by clever and cool teenagers who all know the school really well. She doesn't even speak French! Then she meets Étienne St. Clair, who is helpful, generous, charming, smart and gorgeous. Of course, he has a girlfriend. And even if he didn't, her new friend Meredith also obviously has a crush on him. So Anna is unlikely to experience any French kissing from him, right?

Now, at the start of the book, I was torn between wanting to slap some sense into Anna, and give her a hug. Her excessive whining that her pompous, somewhat emotionally unavailable, but very rich father has see fit to send her to a posh boarding school in Paris, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, is pretty much what you'd find in the dictionary as an example of first world problem. Yet at the same time, she's never been away from home before and she's an insecure teenage girl, and now she's half a world away from everyone and everything she knows, in a foreign country full of culture and sophistication. It speaks to her dad's cluelessness that he'd send his daughter to a boarding school in a country where she doesn't even speak the language. As someone who voluntarily moved to Scotland to go to University when I was eighteen, and had some pretty big culture shocks, I can understand and symphatise, because Anna's situation is so much scarier.

Luckily, Meredith, the girl in the room next to Anna comforts her when she hears her crying through the wall, and Anna soon makes a group of very good friends, one of whom is St. Clair (no one really calls him Étienne). Realising that he's completely out of her reach, Anna denies her crush as much as she can, but they have undeniable chemistry, and the more time they spend together, the more obvious it is that he's not entirely uninterested in her either. Yet he seems completely devoted to Ellie, his girlfriend who graduated the year before. And Anna has Toph back in Atlanta, who she may have a chance of a real relationship with.

This is a great YA book, with a friendship turning slowly more and more romantic, full of awkward moments, embarrassment and near misses. For all that they are great characters, both Anna and St. Clair had me shouting at the book, because they keep doing the exactly wrong thing and sabotaging their happy ending. The description of a close friendship that turns into something more romantic is so very well done. I was very good friends with my now husband before I woke up one day, realising that I was in love with him, and it was nerve-wracking to think I might ruin our friendship if I told him I fancied him and he didn't like me back. Also, he'd been dating another good friend of mine for a week. As it turned out, she wanted to date someone else, and he did like me back and this is our thirteenth year together. But this book hit a lot of right notes for me.

It helps that the supporting cast of characters are so much fun too. Anna's friendship with her bestie in Atlanta, Bridgette, is complicated when she returns home for Christmas break, but she makes some great friends at the School of America in Paris. As is only appropriate in a high school setting, even though it's in beautiful Paris, there are also antagonists with bitchy mean girls and douchy guys to fully round out the setting. I've been seeing this book raved about on a number of review sites for years, and my beloved Rainbow Rowell rated it five stars. I'm glad I finally had a chance to read it.

#CBR5 Book 31. "The Chocolate Kiss" by Laura Florand

320 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Magalie Chaudron lives high in a tower over the tiny tea salon La Maison des Sorcières (the witches' house). In the window there is always a unique chocolate display depicting magical wonders, the walls are decorated with witches' hats and customers can buy divine hot chocolate that Magalie has stirred wishes of happiness and prosperity into. When world renowned pastry chef Philippe Lyonnais decides to open his most recent pastry shop just down the street from their salon, Magalie is convinced this will steal all their customers away and drive the aunts out of business. She goes to warn Philippe to stay away, but only succeeds in making him more determined.

Philippe is enchanted with the fierce woman who comes to his shop and tries to make him move his shop. He tries to placate her with a macaron made from his own hand, and she flatly refuses. In return, he refuses all of Magalie's attempts to try her hot chocolate, not entirely certain the little witch hasn't added poison to it, or whether drinking it will turn him into a toad. No matter how hateful she is to him, he is determined to win her over, becoming obsessed with discovering the perfect creation to make her fall for him, as he has fallen for her.

The Chocolate Kiss is a sequel of sorts to The Chocolate Thief, and feature cameos from Sylvain and Cade briefly, but the reader in no way needs to have read the first to enjoy the second. While The Chocolate Thief was a fluffy, light-hearted romp, there is more angst and a much slower build-up in this one. Magalie is a terribly stubborn and determined, and self-sufficient to the point of idiocy, with massive trust issues and a huge fear of commitment because her parents kept uprooting her throughout her childhood and adolescence, until she never had a proper home or anyone she could rely on.

She creates this perceived image of Philippe as a spoiled, arrogant fairy-tale prince, who will ride in to her fairy-tale existence on the Ilê de St. Louis in Paris, and lay waste to all she holds dear. She's convinced that if her aunt's cafe loses its customers, she will lose her safe haven and have to move yet again, and never stops to listen to her aunts when they tell her that they're quite happy for the tea shop to remain a secret, known only to some, and that they really don't need the revenue from it. As she keeps fighting her attraction to Philippe, her wishes seem to drive every woman who drinks a cup of her chocolate straight towards his pastry shop, until it drives him mad with frustration.

Philippe is not particularly spoiled, and has worked very hard to become as famous as he is. Like Sylvain, he can be seen as arrogant, because he knows he has no rivals in his field. A driven man, he has enormous self control, in all matters that don't concern Magalie. Because of his supportive family and thoroughly functional and happy upbringing, he is also patient and secure enough in his feelings for her that even when she tries her best to drive him away, desperately afraid that she'll get hurt, he endures Magalie's tantrums and insecurities, certain that with time, he can draw the witch out of her ivory tower and they will have their happily ever after.

On quite a few occasions while reading this book, I really did want to shake Magalie and tell her to snap out of it, and kind of thought that Philippe should probably move on and find someone who actually deserved his awesomeness, but at the same time, Florand takes the time to show why she has such a difficult time trusting people and opening herself up to others. It would have been a lot more unsatisfying and unrealistic if she jumped into Philippe's arms, ready for her HEA after one kiss and the slow build from antagonists to lovers was different from what I'd expected when reading The Chocolate Thief, but no less satisfying.

#CBR5 Book 29. "The Chocolate Thief" by Laura Florand

Page count: 320 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Cade Corey, heir to a multi-billion dollar fortune, whose family makes the mass produced chocolate bars sold in every supermarket in America, wants to establish a gourmet chocolate line, and she wants the name of a top of the line French chocolatier to help her sell the enterprise. As Sylvain Marquis is the most sought after and famous French chocolate artisan, she offers him the chance to make a fortune, and he turns her down flat, outraged at her impudence. Having worked his way up to become the best, he will not sell out to some presumptuous American, whose family makes what can barely be called chocolate.

Not one to give up easily, Cade resolves to put the arrogant, but oh so handsome man out of her mind, convinced that her family's fortunes and the promise to make insane amounts of money will sway one of the chocolatiers of Paris to join in her business venture. Of course, forgetting Sylvain Marquis would be a lot easier if the flat she had rented didn't overlook his shop, and she didn't keep running into him in shops and restaurants in the area. Her father thinks she is foolish to be wasting time in Paris in the first place, her grandfather encourages her to conduct industrial espionage and steal Sylvain's secrets. So when the opportunity arises to do just that, Cade sneaks into Sylvain's labratoire to see what she can find. Her snooping doesn't go undetected, however, and soon the Internet food blogs are abuzz with rumours of a chocolate thief stealing the delectable Marquis chocolates in the dead of night.

I discovered this book thanks to the Dabwaha tournament, an annual March Madness style competition, run by Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and Dear Author. As the book was also fortuitously on sale on Amazon the other week, I jumped at the chance to try it (not just because reading about hot Frenchmen who can do wonders with chocolate is much more fun than doing correction work), and I'm very glad I did. It was a very quick read, and I'm sure that if I'd spent days over it, I could have found more flaws. But I didn't, and I don't want to pick holes in it.

Sylvain Marquis is a wonderful hero, at once both arrogant and self-assured about his professional expertise, yet surprisingly insecure and doubtful about himself and his ability to impress women. He knows he's the best at what he does in terms of chocolate, and he knows he can win practically any woman over with the promise of his sinfully delicious gourmet treats, but never having had any success holding on to women long-term, and having been a gangly teenager who kept getting friend-zoned, he's still terrified that Cade will leave him, like all the other beautiful women have.

Cade has never met anyone who isn't impressed with her family's money and influence, and is baffled when she comes to Paris and everyone seems to find her money vulgar and offensive. Even offering exorbitant sums of money won't get her a carton of milk at a café, and the Corey family name is certainly not something any chocolatier worth his salt in France will want to be associated with. Everyone assumes she's had an easy life because of her money, when in fact, her stay in Paris is the first time in years she's had any time to herself. She's used to people constantly asking for help to fund things, and aware that most men can't see past her vast fortune to see the woman she really is. She's hard working, diligent and very loyal to her family and all the people who depend on her in the business, but in Sylvain's labratoire  she experiences a magical world that she desperately wants to be a part of. That the owner of that world attracts her and infuriates her to no end, makes her livid, but she also finds it refreshing that he seems drawn to her despite her money, not because of it.

Florand clearly loves Paris, and chocolate, and chocolate making makes for a surprisingly sexy setting for a romance. It's probably not surprising that a gorgeous man who creates amazing chocolates makes for an attractive romantic hero, but it's his insecurities, and the fact that he's not actually very good with women that makes Sylvain so likable. He keeps screwing up and saying and doing the wrong things, and then he's not afraid to admit his mistakes and apologise, trying to make amends. While he's appalled by her attempts to buy his name for her company, Sylvain decides he wants to seduce Cade fairly early on, and he works very systematically and cleverly to do so. It takes a strong and stubborn woman to withstand his attentions for as long as Cade did.

There is apparently already another book in the series, which various review assure me is even more enjoyable than this one. So I will definitely be checking out more of Florand's books.