There are positives: I liked that the main character is a successful professional who’s devoted to her family and to the family business. Or looking at every attractive woman as competition. Or the fact that Sylvain’s early refusal and dismissal of Cade seems to be the key to what keeps her coming back. Or having to describe every outfit she wears and how much makeup she puts on. Such as Cade stubbornly running around the city in heels while thinking about how much her feet hurt. Of course, there are things that bugged me. Well, as I said, I did read all the way to the end, so clearly, it’s a compelling story. And it goes pretty much where you’d expect it to go. Needless to say, it doesn’t hurt a bit that Sylvain is gorgeous and manly and has beautiful hands. Not one to give up, Cade eventually ends up breaking into Sylvain’s laboratoire, fingering all of his chocolate-making supplies, leaving chocolatey fingerprints everywhere, and winding up covered by gourmet blogs as the mysterious “Chocolate Thief”. Think Hershey - Corey is a multi-billion dollar corporation that thrives off of its 33-cent chocolate bars sold at Walmarts and in supermarket checkout lines across America.Ĭade’s dream is to launch a line of gourmet, high-end chocolate as a flagship enterprise for Corey, but to make it happen, she needs a Parisian chocolatier to sign on to the scheme, agree to let Cade buy him for millions, and then mass-produce his type of chocolate, stamped with his name, as part of the Corey brand.Ĭade gets a nasty awakening when she pursues the #1 chocolatier in Paris, Sylvain Marquis, and is given an angry and emphatic NO. Cade is the youngest generation of the Corey chocolate dynasty of Corey, Maryland. In The Chocolate Thief, 20-something American businesswoman Cade Corey has come to Paris to see if she can make a dream come true. I do have a problem, though, with romance novels, and The Chocolate Thief belongs firmly on the romance shelf.Īll that being said, I will admit that I didn’t hate The Chocolate Thief, and actually, once I accepted that I was reading this book and sticking with it, I kind of got sucked in - at least, enough to read for a couple of hours straight this morning so I could see how it all turned out. Don’t get me wrong - I have nothing against chocolate! And if you don’t believe me, just send me some and see if I eat it. My lovely online book group picked The Chocolate Thief by Laura Florand for our February group read.

Let’s be perfectly clear: This is not my usual kind of read.

The chocolate thief by laura florand