Jenny Colgan’s books fit into a strange genre, I think… they’re obviously meant to be warm and cozy, given the titles, and they are. But the people who gravitate towards those sorts of books probably don’t want the language and the sex and the political content (I wouldn’t have thought anyway), and yet, it’s there in spades too. I suppose not everyone who wants warm and cozy wants Mayberry, exactly.
Anyway, this one follows Anna, who worked in a chocolate factory in London, after a freak accident leaves her missing a couple of toes. (Very random accident to include in a novel.) While in hospital, she reconnects with her former French teacher, who is in hospital for cancer. I don’t know why Anna is in hospital for so long given her relatively minor injury, but she is–so to keep from going crazy, she lets Claire, her former teacher, teach her French again. Since Anna now doesn’t know what to do with her life anymore since she can’t go back to her previous job and her life is going nowhere, Claire convinces her to go to Paris, where Claire still has connections from when she was there as a young girl, and work in a chocolate shop run by an old flame of Claire’s. It’s a story about Anna finding herself, and Claire’s life in flashback as she deteriorates.
I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that the story ends bittersweet, but happy for Anna. It’s a good bedtime read, if you can overlook some of the content.
My rating: ***1/2
Language: present, and moderate I guess
Sexual content: there, and moderate too
Violence: none
Political content: it’s there too, but peripheral
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