We took a month off for my travels in August, but it's time to announce the September Book Club Pick! Our pick this month is The Chocolate Touch by Laura Florand!
Florand's book The Chocolate Kiss was a book club pick back in March, and I'm so excited to share this new book in the Amour et Chocolat series.
Summary? But of course!
Dominique Richard's reputation says it all–wild past, wilder flavors, black leather and smoldering heat. Jaime Corey is hardly the first woman to be drawn to all that dark, delicious danger. Sitting in Dom's opulent chocolaterie in Paris day after day, she lets his decadent creations restore her weary body and spirit, understanding that the man himself is entirely beyond her grasp.
Until he touches her. . .
Chocolate, Dominique understands–from the biting tang of lime-caramel to the most complex infusions of jasmine, lemon-thyme, and cayenne. But this shy, freckled American who sits alone in his salon, quietly sampling his exquisite confections as if she can't get enough of them–enough of him–is something else. She has secrets too, he can tell. Of course if she really knew him, she would run.
Yet once you have spotted your heart's true craving, simply looking is no longer enough….
As always, As always, All Romance eBooks is offering the 50% eBook Buck rebate if you use code SBTBARE at checkout. The rebate is good from September 6-20, 2013. You can also find a paper copy at your local library, or at Amazon or BN.
I'm working on setting up the chat date with Laura Florand, and as soon as I have it finalized, I'll update you all.
In the meantime, I hope you'll give this book a try, and enjoy another visit to Paris through a book. I can't wait to chat about it with you!
I hated The Chocolate Kiss, so hopefully, this one will have less misogynistic overtones and i’ll be able to enjoy it.
I binged on Laura Florand’s books a while back, and I kind of overdid it, I think. Like ScifiGirl1986, I found some of them to be a little misogynistic, and I remember I was really uncomfortable with some borderline consent issues in Turning Up the Heat. When I read The Chocolate Thief, I thought I had finished it, but a month and a half later, I found it on my Kindle at like 92%. It’s not a good sign when I’m 8% from the end and I can’t be bothered to finish a book.
It’s so odd, because I’ll start out really loving each of her books, but somewhere between halfway and three-quarters of the way through, they just kind of fizzle for me. I’ve actually been in a bit of a book rut for a few months now. I just haven’t found anything that I really enjoy (except Lucy Woodhull’s latest; I really enjoyed The Dimple of Doom, despite my husband’s constant nagging to hurry up so he could read it).
Ow! Ok I was nervous about whether I wanted to read this, I hated and DNFed the last one the Chocolate Kiss. It’s so sad because her prose quality is so goregous.
It was really funny last time how she complained that the Chronicles of Narnia were sexed and not feminist, and I found her book really misogynistic. I don’t know; I’d have to buy this book and I am not sure I want to spend on something I don’t really enjoy. So I’ll probably skip this month. Sigh.
EmilyA, I requested a copy of this one from my library, which is what I did with the last one we read by her. I have also instructed my family to keep all fire producing objects away from me while I am reading the book—just in case.
DreadPirateRachel, that is about as far as I got in The Chocolate Kiss before having to stop. There were certain scenes in it that I really liked—the snow day, for instance—but each time the woman apologized for something she shouldn’t be apologizing for I got very angry. I kept hoping that there would be some point at which it would be revealed that the book took place in the 1950’s or something.
If I don’t like this book, I’ll probably skip book club night because I felt that the author was very rude during the last chat—she ignored anyone that said something she didn’t like about the book. I get loving what you write, but it really bugged me that she wouldn’t even consider the idea that her book was misogynistic, verging on abusive, stalker territory.
Yeah, but how do you respond to something like that in a meaningful, non-defensive way, in the middle of a chat room? Because that’s a pretty strong criticism. Not that it’s not valid, but I remember the same debate with Stephanie Meyer’s books—it’s hard for an author to respond to these things really well, I think, because (1) they are very close to the book they wrote and (2) they’re also trying to sell you a book.
I don’t know. Kind of typing out loud. 🙂 The last sentence really caught my attention, and I was just thinking about how one could address a topic like that without getting defensive. I suppose it would have to be in the execution: the reader would ask it in a non-rude, jerk way and the author would respond in the spirit in which it was intended? IDK. I’ve never really seen it work out that way.
I’m really excited about this chat. I read this book last week and flat-out loved it.
Diana, I don’t think I really wanted her to defend her book to me, but it would have been nice if she had at least responded. Something like, “Yes, I’ve heard that said before and I didn’t mean for it to have come out that way.” Or even, “I don’t care what you have to say about my book. It was amazing and anyone that didn’t like it is stupid.” Any response would have been nice because that would have meant I was being heard. The way things went down, it just seemed like if you weren’t gushing over the romance, you weren’t present. I’m trying to be a writer and I would like to think that I would be big enough to at least acknowledge the fact that my writing may not be to everyone’s taste. That’s something that I can respect.
@SciFiGirl:
I’m sorry you didn’t feel heard in the last chat. It moves very quickly and the text flies by faster the more comments there are, and I’m sorry you felt that your perspective was lost. I personally want the chat to welcome differing points of view. I don’t want people present to feel as if they have to love the book in order to participate, and I feel badly that was your experience.
I remember your comments and am still thinking about them (e.g. “I wonder why that bothered SFG but it didn’t bother me because I’m often twitchy about that type of thing”) and completely understand your point of view, but regardless, I’m sorry that you felt ignored.
(I’m going to see if there’s a way I can slow down the text scrolling when the chat is live, even if that means delaying the posted commentary by .5 seconds or so.)
SBSarah, I only felt that way with this specific author and that’s why i’ve been back for almost all of the chats since then. I love them, especially when I don’t like the book as much as everyone else because it helps me to see why others may have liked something that I didn’t. I really hope that I like this book because I really liked the writing style, which I felt was very flow-y, despite not liking some of the content. I also really hope that what I thought was a slight against people who didn’t like the book was just the chat moving too quickly.
I just hope that I can participate in the chat this month—I’m having 4 teeth pulled sometime in the next few weeks and I might not be up to doing anything more than binging on Once Upon A Time, Buffy, and Doctor Who on Netflix.
@SciFiGirl – FOUR?! GOOD LORD. I wish you excellent painkillers and very good Netflixing!
Thanks. All 4 wisdom teeth need to be removed. my choice wasn’t to have them all out at once, but my dentist said that was for the best.