September 25, 2005

Book of the Week: THE CHOCOLATE MOUSE TRAP by JoAnna Carl

My friend JoAnna Carl just published the fifth book in her Chocaholic series, THE CHOCOLATE MOUSE TRAP. I’ve known JoAnna (otherwise known as Eve Sandstrom) for at least fifteen years, and we’ve roomed together at countless conventions. We have compatible habits, not all of them good! When JoAnna was considering her newest series, she ran the idea past me, and I loved it. JoAnna’s protagonist, Lee McKinney, is a Texas beauty queen who’s had a terrible marriage. She moves to a resort town in Michigan, Warner’s Pier, to work for her aunt, who owns a small but exclusive chocolate company. Lee is the office manager for her aunt, and in five books Lee’s learned a lot about running a chocolate manufacturing company, pleasing customers, and many little factoids about chocolate itself. Of course, JoAnna’s readers have, too. There are many things to like about this series. It’s well written -- the characters are never one-dimensional. While staying within the ‘cozy’ box, JoAnna’s not a sweetness and light writer. The Chocoholic books are great to give anyone, even your maiden aunt, but they’re not sickeningly sweet. JoAnna never writes an explicit sex scene, but the characters are adult people, and their relationship is understood.

These books, like JoAnna’s books under her other name, are mysteries, and quite clever ones. I especially liked THE CHOCOLATE CAT CAPER, in which Lee’s love interest, Joe Woodyard, inherits a lot of money from his first wife; who just happens to be in residence in Warner’s Pier when she is murdered. Joe is far from an ideal romance hero, but as we get to know him, we can understand why Lee falls for him. By the time you’ve read the series up to and including THE CHOCOLATE MOUSE TRAP, you’ll be pleased Lee and Joe are planning their wedding.

The whole series makes great gifts for other chocolate lovers. I’m proud to stand up and say, “My name is Charlaine, and I’m a Chocoholic!”

Blog

It’s been a week and a half of severe ups and downs for me and my family. I know there are people who are suffering much worse than I, believe me. I haven’t forgotten the vicitims of Katrina and Rita. But since this is my personal blog, I think I’ll keep it personal.

The shocks began early in the week, when we heard that a friend of my daughter’s had had a stroke. (Yes, my daughter’s fourteen, and so is her friend.) There’s nothing you can say to parents who are waiting to hear what their child’s future holds, after such an unexpected catastrophe. There was a limit as to how much I could do for them, since I had long been scheduled to have surgery last Wednesday. The surgery went without a hitch, and when I am all healed, I am looking forward to raising my arm or bending it backward without a twinge. But for a few days, I’m on light duty here at home.

My mother and her caregiver came to help out, which was extraordinarily kind of them. Since they had the run of our kitchen and laundry room (God bless them) I have lost all my false pride, since my housekeeping deficiencies are now open knowledge, and I’ll tell you the simple truth. I can’t iron. I can’t fold. And I’m old enough to be embarrassed at these admissions. Everything I iron looks as though I threw it on the floor and trampled it. So now you know.

Then Rita crossed Florida and headed for our neck of the woods. I have many friends in Houston, and heard from two of them before they packed up their computers and either fled the area or hunkered down to wait it out. Another friend, I found when I called, had also decided to weather the storm at home, after he saw on the news how hard it would be to leave. The motels here filled up again, some with the same people who’d been here for Katrina. My mother and her companion tried to decide if they should go home early or not. We closed our tool shed, fed our duck, bought some water and flashlight batteries, and waited to see what would happen.

As it turned out, nothing much did. We had a bad storm, and some twigs and branches are down. Our electricity is up, and so is our internet service. But the whole reinforced the scary conviction I’ve always held: We are not the boss. And sometimes we’re only bystanders in our own lives.