Christmas Wishes at the Chocolate Shop

by Jessica Redland

Charlee was raised by her grandparents. When they both passed away and her beloved mentor at the chocolate shop moved back to France, Charlee is encouraged by her live-in boyfriend Ricky to move to the city where he has just found a new job. She decides to open her own chocolate shop. Meanwhile, she continues to pay all of Ricky’s expenses because he is trying so hard to pay off his credit card debt and he puts in a lot of overtime. If you are less naive than I or Charlee, for that matter, red flags are probably fluttering high.

Charlee has one really good friend Jodie who moves to Charlee’s new town soon after Charlee and works in Charlee’s shop. Through their hard work and the friendship of other small business owners on lovely Castle Street, her new business prospers. Charlee meets the very kind, handsome, and engaged Matt who saves her shop from a plumbing disaster. She also takes the plunge to find her biological mother who abandoned her when she was a baby. It is not a step she is sure she wants to take nor does she know if she wants a relationship with this secretive woman.

In Christmas Wishes at the Chocolate Shop, the setting is very Christmasy including decorations, snow, and tree lightings. A major theme is the difference between Charlee’s first Christmas and the second in her new home of Whitsborough Bay.

There are many questions Charlee has to work through. The journey she takes is fascinating, and the reader will be rooting for Charlee to succeed both personally and professionally. As the book draws to a close, there are many surprises. You will be hoping for a happy ending for (almost) all of the characters.

I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Rating: 4/5

Category: General Fiction, Women’s Fiction, Romance

Notes: I am not generally a huge fan of the romance genre, but I occasionally like to mix in a few, especially when they are Christmas themed. As happens frequently in modern romances, in the beginning of this book, lust gets confused with love. So the first part has a lot of “steam,” but not graphic descriptions. Later in the book, the characters have for the most part worked out what love is, and the focus switches to relationships and making honorable choices.

Publication: August 3, 2021—Boldwood Books

Memorable Lines:

“And now my best mate in the whole wide world, the only person who I care about spending time with, has bogged off to live at the seaside, leaving Billy No Mates here with nothing to do except gorge on Spam sandwiches and watch the soaps every evening.”

Matt and I were obviously destined only to be friends and I was going to have to hope that I’d wake up one day and be over him. Was that a pig flying past my window?

Castle Street was the perfect setting for that magical Christmas feeling. Full of Victorian character buildings and old-fashioned lamps there was almost a Dickensian feel to the place.