REVIEW: The Chocolate Temptation by Laura Florand
B ReviewsContemporary / culinary / interracial-romance / Paris / workplace-romance18 Comments
Dear Ms. Florand:
It’s always fun for me to see what will turn up in a Florand book; I hadn’t seen the cover before I started reading, so the fairy tale allusions here snuck up on me. (Hmmm…. Sarah is working on spun sugar slippers…) But there was another surprise in store, because this is not your usual Cinderella story. As always, there’s a clue in the names: Patrick and Sarah, “nobleman” and “princess.” Patrick is definitely a prince… but he’s not necessary to turn Sarah into a princess.
The story takes place concurrently with that of The Chocolate Heart (which made me a little sorry I hadn’t read that first, but it’s not vital.) In a busy restaurant in Paris, pastry chef intern Sarah Lin spends her days fiercely trying to perfect her techniques and fiercely hating her supervisor, Patrick Chevalier. (Heh… I hadn’t even noticed his last name!) Patrick’s gorgeous, effortless perfection is galling for someone struggling under a heavy weight of disappointed family expectations and survivor’s guilt, and his seemingly casual flirtation drives her mad:
“Sarabelle,” he called laughingly, and she hated him for that, too. The way her ordinary, serious American name turned so exotic and caressing with those French Rs and dulcet Ahs, like a sigh of rich silk all over her skin. The way he added belle onto it, whenever it struck his fancy, as if that couldn’t break someone’s heart, to be convinced someone like him thought she was belle and then realize he thought everybody was belle. He probably called his dog belle, and his four-year-old niece belle when he ruffled her hair. And they both probably looked up at him with helpless melting, too.
Sarah completely discounts Patrick’s continuous care of her — the way he always makes sure she’s fed during their crazy workdays, his quick massages to ease her tense muscles, his constant encouragement. She has no idea that he’s trying to show his feelings in the only way he knows how. Not only is he her boss, in an intensely competitive field, but his own family issues make him approach everything through manipulation rather than directness: “Don’t show you want it. Never show how much you want it.” And he wants Sarah so desperately, he can’t convince himself to be noble. When his boss Luc challenges him about his behavior, Patrick thinks to himself, “I’m not harassing her, really. If she told me to stop, I’d… change my technique.”
I often have trouble with romances in which characters doesn’t think much of themselves — I tend to take them at their own valuation. Although Sarah’s self-esteem is low as only a perfectionist’s can be, The Chocolate Temptation succeeded in making me see why Patrick is so smitten with her. At first, all he can do is constantly tell her she’s pretty, but it’s really her directness and intense focus that beguile him. Sarah’s sense of being ordinary and doing everything wrong gets tiring — in fact, both of their big emotional issues do, because they both think about them all the time – but her seriousness and dedication charmed me as well. And interestingly, although she may feel humble, Sarah completely rejects the role of Cinderella to Patrick’s Prince Charming. There’s quite another role for her in that story, as she and Patrick will discover together. (Though if you relish conventional romance trappings, have no fear. Paris, The Eiffel Tower, Valentine’s Day… I’ll leave it at that.)
Despite his manipulations, Patrick is so smitten and so genuinely kind that he’s almost equally adorable. Their sex scenes are gorgeously sensual and emotional, and told in such fresh language they can go on for pages without getting dull. They’re also often a place of conflict and negotiation, because of the real and perceived power issues between them: “They were not equals. She didn’t have the right to fall in love with him…. she liked him taking over, to be honest, but it left her in a very strange place.”
I was slightly discomforted by their dynamic — him so perfect and golden to her, her so small and pretty to him — because Sarah is half Korean. (Her mother immigrated from North Korea, a highly traumatic experience.) But that may well be me being oversensitive to possible stereotypes because I’m worried about missing them. Sarah’s overachieving character could certainly be seen as stereotypical, but she’s given a lot of background history that makes it feel very specific to her situation. That history is problematic though; Sarah is a self-described Anchor child (a pejorative term, and though thematically interesting, not that likely a situation.) I discussed this with Sunita and she pointed out several ways in which the backstory strained credulity. Also, Patrick likes to tease Sarah by deliberately mixing up elements from different Asian cultures, which I think is intended to show how little importance it has to them, but I’m not sure someone who’s actually had to deal with racist microaggressions would be as patient about it as Sarah is. Overall, I didn’t get the feeling that their attraction was about her being Asian and him being white — I believed that Patrick loves her smallness because he loves her, not the other way around — but another reader with a different background might be more bothered than I was.
There are more complex themes going on in the story than I can mention, and sometimes the book felt overcrowded with meaning and revelations. I think it could have been tightened up, but it’s very sweet and fun to read. B
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You led me into my first Florand book and I thank you for it. Her writing is lush, her heroes tend to be swoontastic and the woman have bite. Not to mention Paris and chocolate. I mean, romance, Paris and chocolate, what’s not to like?
Going to buy this book now.
I’m interested to hear about your feelings (and Sunita’s) on Sarah’s backstory. I was not completely convinced by it either, although there were some aspects that I thought rang true emotionally. I also felt there was an imbalance in the attention given to her backstory and Patrick’s. His mother was just as influential on him as Sarah’s was on her, but I had no idea what made her treat him the way she did. ‘She was a manipulative bitch’ wasn’t enough of a reason.
But that aside, I did love this a lot. I loved the way Florand showed the two of them interacting in the kitchen. I believed in their misunderstandings and liked the way they worked them out. I liked that sometimes Sarah was the courageous one and sometimes it was Patrick taking the lead. And I really liked that not every detail of their future was resolved and spelled out for us.
@Ros: That’s a good point. I’m pretty much used to shorthand background motivations in romance, but the fact that so much care is given to show the difficulties of Sarah’s mother does highlight the lesser attention to Patrick’s.
@Willaful: Yes, exactly.
I’ve also been thinking about the idea of the ‘loveable stalker.’ I wonder if this is a thing a bit like the discussions we’ve had on DA about rape in romance. For me, there were moments where Patrick’s actions and thoughts ‘broke the spell’ that I feel caught up in with Florand’s fantasy. But mostly, I was consenting to his actions on Sarah’s behalf, because of what we were shown of his motivations. There was kindness and care, as well as desire, behind the way that he treated her. And when he confesses it to Sarah, she consents to it too, re-calibrating it as courtship, albeit in a workplace setting.
She’s Korean and her surname is Lin? I dearly hope there’s a reason for that that’s not “Uh Lin sounded Korean to me” because there’s no Lin in Korean.
That said I enjoy Florand novels and will probably read this, as I liked the story with Luc, and Patrick seemed like a fun guy in it. But Florand’s books are all sort of starting to bleed together in my mund because they’re so similar in structure and trajectory. And the naming makes it worse, Chocolate everything all the time!
@Sarah: This is how her name is addressed in the book:
“I thought Lin was a Chinese name,” he said, and she blinked, surprised he knew that. She hadn’t even known it herself until a genealogy project in fourth grade.
“It probably came from China at some point, generations back. I don’t really know.” Her mom didn’t like to talk about Korea or her family.
I looked up the name, saw Wikipedia listed it as being used in Korea as well and unfortunately didn’t look further — it seems to be pretty controversial as a last name!
I think this one had a somewhat different feel from the previous books, aside from the fact that it’s an interracial romance –they work together and there’s subsequently less “food wooing.”
I have a whole pile of Florand on my TBR. I want to start at the first one but I confess I’m beginning to be daunted at the speed her books are coming out. It seems every time I look there’s another and I’m even further behind! LOL
As an aside, I wonder if my HR background would be a problem in this book? I was at the physio the other day and saw a podiatrist who works in the practice go up to the two receptionists at different times and rub their shoulders or lean in close and touch them in some way. It creeped me out and I was thinking: “sexual harassment alert, report it to the Practice Manager STAT!!”.
Wait…I’m confused….please let me know where my logic is wrong:
The heroine’s last name is Lin…she’s American – but half Korean from her mother…so shouldn’t she have her father’s last name…or is her father also Korean (or Chinese or whatever “Lin” is a typical surname…I admit to having no clue), and wouldn’t that make her all Korean background….or are her parents divorced and she took her mother’s last name…or is there some cultural thing that I’m missing?
My brain hurts.
@Nicole: Her history is complicated, but to put it simply, her parents weren’t married and she doesn’t know who her father is.
@Kaetrin: I know the feeling! You don’t have to read them *all*…. start with the first novella or the first novel and see what you think.
Want! Thank you :).
@Willaful
thanks for the explanation and thanks for your review!
@Kaetrin:
Kaetrin – Trust me don’t worry about the number of books. Once you read one you’ll be excited to have so many after. But I never feel like I have to have read one to enjoy another. So don’t worry if you read them out of order.
I love her books loved them all and I loved the romance here as well, but yeah Sarah’s backstory strained credibility in several ways for me too. Too bad I can’t talk spoilers here, but let’s just say I wish the writer would have done a better research about people fleeing dictatorship regimes and how they could be allowed to stay here. First book that does not get an A from me.
@Sirius: It’s a shame, because it’s a pretty shattering backstory otherwise and definitely could contribute to interesting character formation.
Willaful – yes absolutely.