Review – Carole Matthews “The Chocolate Lovers’ Club”

Publ: 2007, Headline
Pensby Library
ISBN: 978 0 7553 3583 1
Genre: Romantic comedy
Pages: 346p
Rating: ***** ***

Another first class romantic comedy from the girl who, in my book, is the queen of the genre. Charming, funny, and with a plot that has so many twists it could easily have formed the basis for a murder mystery.

I’ve read a few Carole Matthews books and she hasn’t let me down yet.

The novel revolves around the lives and loves of the four members of the Chocolate Lover’s Club – Lucy, Nadia, Autumn and Chantal. They meet – usually when one of them has a crisis in her life, which is about every other day - in a cafe called Chocolate Heaven, run by a gay choclatier and his partner. All the right ingredients are there for our heroines – cheating boyfriend, flirtatious boss, disinterested husband, gambling addicted partner, and a drug addict brother. The characters are clearly delineated and so believable – there must be someone in there you recognise.

I love the dedication in this book which includes the comment - “The research for this book has been very taxing – all that chocolate, so little time. A big thanks to all the people who have helped me with my quest and who have turned a passion for chocolate into a major addiction.”

Some of my favourite quotes:-

“But don’t Targa normally find a reason to give the bullet wo everyone who gets pregnant!”
“Only the women,” Crush says with a shrug...

The glow on her cheeks was a dead giveaway that something or someone – had tickled her fancy. Sometimes those quaint British sayings fitted the situation so well.

George Clooney never had these problems. Did he ever have his heist foiled because one of his Ocean’s Eleven gang couldn’t get a babysitter? I think not.


CAROLE MATTHEWS has become an internationally acclaimed author and her books regularly reach the top five of the Sunday Times best-sellers list. “A Minor Indiscretion” reached no 1 in the W H Smith list. In addition to writing novels and television scripts he presents on radio and finds time to rollerblade in Central Park, trek in the Himalayas, take tea in China and snooze in her shed in Milton Keynes – as well, of course, as eating chocolate.

The first of here books that I read was “A Whiff of Scandal” (1998) (aka The Scent of Scandal) then I followed that with “Let's Meet on Platform 8” (1997). Then there was “More to Life Than This” (1999) and “A Compromising Position” (2002). That still leaves me a lot of her books to read including the next book with the same heroines – “The Chocolate Lovers Diet” (2007).