The chocolate lovers' diet

I loved 'The Chocolate Lovers' Diet' by Carole Matthews. It is the sequel to 'The Chocolate Lovers' Club'. 4 friends - Nadia, Autumn, Lucy and Chantel - are chocoholics. They meet whenever there is an emergency in their lives at a cafe called Chocolate Heaven. What happens when Lucy finds herself mixed up with her ex-fiance Marcus; Nadia tries to find out whether her estranged husband has kicked his gambling habit; Chantel decides she'd like to get back with her estranged husband Ted and Autumn wonders whether she'll ever be free of her drug addict brother. As I said in my Amazon review, the wedding day is worthy of an Ealing comedy. Whilst the book is strictly chick lit it does have its more sombre moments and deals with some serious issues - on-line gambling, male prostitutes - for women that is - debt, pregnancy when you don't know who the father is, drug addiction, class divisions. Well worth a read - epsecially if you cannot resist descriptions of chocolate!

I reviewed my to read pile and finally chose 'The Diary of an on-call girl' by E E Bloggs. This is written by a WPC and is along the lines of the popular blog turned book called 'Wasting Police Time' by PC David Copperfield - another pseudonym. I think I've read most of the current crop of 'reality' books and found all of them engrossing. What is there to beat an insider's view of their own profession?

I have just received today in the post Rosie Thornton's 'Hearts and Minds', and I'm looking forward to starting it. Its theme seems to be how a man survives in a woman's world. I shall say no more until I've read it.

I have read so many really good books lately. It seems to me the standard of published books is increasing though perhaps I'm reading more widely that I used to. This is very much thanks to dovegreyreader - linked to this blog - and to Writers' News and Writing Magazine. Amazon having the facility to search inside books also makes me try things I might otherwise not consider at all. Then of course there's cheap second hand books available. I don't mind paying £2-£3 to try an unknown author. Though I also buy loads of new books as well.

Off to have a shower and curl up with 'Diary' as above, with maybe a dip into 'A dangerous man' and 'Hearts and Minds' as well.