The Chocolate Maker's Wife

I must confess that I'm still dipping my toes into Historical Fiction and that, at times, I still find it tough to get into. It requires that I constantly remind myself of the fact that there wasn't always space for women in our world, the way that there is now. Otherwise I'd want to wring the necks of many a male lead. That being said, I was a little wary about The Chocolate Maker's Wife. This book is quite long. I hoped that the focus on chocolate houses, and my interest in them, would help with that fact. As it stands, I'm still on the fence about this book.

First, the good. It's obvious that Karen Brooks has done her research on this time period. Set in 17th Century London, this book has quite a variety of historical touch points. The plague, the Great Fire of London, and even the politics of the time are all focused on in great detail. As someone who doesn't have the familiarity of this time period that I wish I did, all of this was extremely helpful in allowing me to sink into the story. It was such a tumultuous time, and Brooks shows that in vivid strokes.

The biggest problem I had, and here is where we start with the not so good parts, is that there is a lot of repetition in this story. It makes sense that Brooks would want to show off her historical accuracy, but there are points where I just wanted to skim past the thirteenth description of Rosamund's angelic laughter in the span of three pages. While I thought that maybe this repetition would eventually allow the characters to be fleshed out, they still managed to be really one-dimensional throughout most of the story. There are the angelic beings, like Rosamund, who are perfectly good. There are vile villains who are perfectly bad. Alas, there's not a whole lot in between. I like some gray area in my characters.

This took me a bit longer than I expected to finish, but I did enjoy the story overall. For that, I'll give The Chocolate Maker's Wife a solid three star rating. It might not have been the perfect Historical Fiction book, but it's pretty solid.