Review: The Chocolate Lovers' Club by Carole Matthews

Lucy Lombard and her three friends Autumn, Nadia and Chantal all have diverse life styles and seemingly have not much in common but one thing: their love of chocolate. When one of them has a problem, and it is generally man related, they call the others and all meet at Chocolate Heaven, a small gourmet cafe that specializes in their addiction.

Let's take a look at the characters :
Lucy, a somewhat hapless temp has been dating serial cheater Marcus for some years now. Despite her friends telling her to dump the loser, she is holding out for Marcus to change his ways and become a permanent fixture in her life. Ha! On a whim without calling first, Lucy visits Marcus to find him in flagrante delicto with another woman. Lucy gets her revenge by visiting his flat ( yes, she still has a key) when Marcus is not home and leaves some "surprises" in his very expensive suit pockets, his Italian loafers and under the couch cushions. Marcus keeps tellling her he loves her and his wandering will never happen again. Lucy feels bad about what she did to his clothes. Hmmm, sort of.

Autumn works at a drug rehabilitation center for teens. Unfortunately, she cannot seem to get her brother off of drugs and he wrecks havoc with her lifestyle. Autumn is somewhat of a wishy-washy character and didn't get too much response from me other than to wish she would grow a spine.

Nadia is married to Tim who has an addiction to on line gambling. When she can't take anymore, she packs up her son and moves out despite Tim's protestations that he has kicked the habit and will attempt to stick to his plumbing business. I liked Nadia. She seemed to be a strong woman who really cared about her family and did what had to be done.

Ah, now we come to Chantal, a very successful and sexy woman whose husband doesn't care too much about their floundering, almost non-existent love life. Chantal decides to seek out what she has been missing and on her next business trip picks up a handsome stranger in the hotel. When she wakes the next morning, her jewelry, purse and laptop are all missing. How on earth is she going to explain this to hubby?

She calls the other members of the Chocolate Lover's Club and tells them the whole story. After virtually calling her an idiot, Lucy comes up with a plan to make it all right again. The four friends will pull off a heist of their own and extract a little vengeance after they lure the thief to a very upscale hotel.

This is where the book started to become very amusing to me. Up to this point it was sort of just okay chick- lit but the hotel caper had me in hysterics. Matthews starts hitting her comic stride with the revengeful antics and from then on there are several more humorous happenings to Lucy at work that made the book redeemable and go from an initial 2* (eh, can take it or leave it) rating to a 3*. A lot of the book is predictable and I'm not too sure I would read a sequel but it is still an enjoyable read with an ending that does wrap up nicely. If you like romantic comedy, chick- lit or just want to read something very light and amusing, you might try this one. 3***