Wonderful fun. I’m sure everybody but me knows the story by now as I remember this being made into a film a few years ago that I never got around to going to see. Just for the record this is the story of what happens when Vianne Rocher blows into a small village France at the beginning of the traditionally austere Lent period and opens a luxurious chocolate shop. The local curate and his groupies are not at all happy.

I wasn’t expecting a great plot from this, but just as in Coastliners I got a gorgeous plot. It’s not all happy chocolate munching and it’s populated with a fabulous cast of characters. I love the way we find out more about Vianne and her mother, and for that matter everybody else, than she ever tells us. It feels like there is tons of description in the story but the bits that stick with me are the bits we aren’t told explicitly.

Having read Harris’s fourth book first I do think she has become a better writer as she’s gone along but this is magic all the same. I’m really looking forward to reading her other stories.