Mini review: Deception-The Arcade Year 2 Episode 1 by Kitty Charles

It's New Year's Eve and the tenants of Angell's Arcade are preparing in their own ways to greet 2014. But as they gather for their traditional get together under the glass atrium, it seems as though everyone has something to hide.

And Joan is keeping the biggest secret of them all...nothing will ever be the same again.

The #1 Amazon bestselling serial! Like your favourite soap, The Arcade brings you characters you love to hate – and to love. Each bite-sized episode is perfect for your journey to work, your lunch-break – or a quiet night of escapism. And it’ll leave you wanting more – with a teaser of next month’s storyline! 

Review: this episode of The Arcade kicks off perfectly, covering every single character and catching up with wha they are doing now, it also leads readers in the directions of what is going to happen in the year ahead in The Arcade. I have to admit, I really didn't know where the arcade as going to go next, there was so much drama and so much happened last year in this fabulous series, and yet the writers have managed to set up some drama and goings on nicely for the year ahead. 

It was great that this episode literally covers all the characters. If you're wondering how things are faring for the characters featured in the November episode, you can find out here. If you're wanting to know how a certain new arcade couple are getting on, you can find out here. It is very hard to cover all the characters in such a short space of time/words and yet it has been done well here. The characters and their storylines have been covered thoroughly and without rushing, and left me feeling entirely satisfied as a regular arcade reader. 

If you missed out on any episodes of The Arcade last year, I would suggest catching up with those before reading the first episode of the second year. If you've yet to meet any of these characters and experience this wonderful monthly soap opera of novellas, then you can always download the entire twelve episodes in Where Dreams Come True, a Year in The Arcade. I don't think readers who haven't read The Arcade yet will be able to access this episode, however regular readers of The Arcade will find everything they are looking for here...

The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris-Jenny Colgan

As dawn breaks over the Pont Neuf, and the cobbled alleyways of Paris come to life, Anna Trent is already awake and at work; mixing and stirring the finest, smoothest, richest chocolate; made entirely by hand, it is sold to the grandes dames of Paris.

It's a huge shift from the chocolate factory she worked in at home in the north of England. But when an accident changed everything, Anna was thrown back in touch with her French teacher, Claire, who offered her the chance of a lifetime - to work in Paris with her former sweetheart, Thierry, a master chocolatier.

With old wounds about to be uncovered and healed, Anna is set to discover more about real chocolate - and herself - than she ever dreamed.

Review: Another delicious offering from Jenny Colgan! First there were cupcakes, then there were sweets, then Christmas cupcakes, and finally, the ultimate-chocolate! I was eagerly awaiting this chocolate novel, and even the cover in a gorgeous Cadbury purple is just as delicious as I hoped it would be. When we first meet main character Anna, the reader feels immediately drawn to her. She is entirely identifiable, and feels as though she could actually be you or me. Still in the town she grew up in, working in a job she is not entirely satisfied with, and having a slightly strained relationship with her parents, a freak accident at work forces her to get away and take on a new challenge.

As well as the Paris setting being an obvious bonus to this book, the characters than Anna meets are also extremely well written. I love the fact that Anna meets up with an old teacher whilst she is recuperating in hospital, and this is where she learns the French that she uses during her time in Paris. I think that Colgan has been incredibly clever in the way she has knitted together the stories of these two women. I admit that I wasn't expecting to be so taken with Claire's story, and yet I felt it was just as powerful, and deserves just as much recognition as Anna's story in the novel.

I feel that the food deserves a whole review of its own! I had to rush out and buy French food in order to continue reading the novel. The chocolate is described in such beautiful detail, I know I would spend the extortionate amount the shop charges in order to taste just one bit of the pure melting beauty of it. And it's not just the chocolate which one craves, the rest of the food in the novel is described so perfectly, the reader can almost smell the baking bread, the frying garlic and the flaky croissants! Just yum!

Overall this book is just as much fun to read as this authors previous food-based novels, and comes with the warning of not to devour it on an empty stomach. I was entirely greedy and finished it over a weekend. It would make a great holiday read, or some fabulous French escapism of an evening. Readers don't need to have read anything by Jenny Colgan before to enjoy this novel, an tough I have no doubt, they will be searching out the cupcakes and the sweets after the taste of chocolate they get within these pages. I thoroughly recommend this novel to anyone, and as Colgan herself say as the end of the book-Bon appetit!