The Chocolatier’s Wife – Cindy Lynn Speer

I received this book through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program, so huge thanks to LT and the author.

In the world where The Chocolatier’s Wife is set, marriage is not left up to chance: every newborn is brought to a Wise Woman, who casts a spell to find out who that child’s destined spouse is to be. This doesn’t guarantee Twoo Wuv; it also doesn’t guarantee happiness. In fact, I think I need to go back and read that bit again to see if it guarantees anything. Regardless, it’s considered binding; it just isn’t done to marry someone other than the person who shows up when that spell is cast.

When small William of Almsley is brought for the spell … nothing happens. Not to worry, his mother is told; his wife-to-be hasn’t been born yet. It’s when this sequence is repeated year after year that everyone does begin to worry… And when I settled in happily, pretty sure I was going to enjoy this book: “This did not mean, as years passed, that the boy was special. It meant that he would be impossible to live with.” Heh.

William’s not impossible, though; stubborn, yes, and not Speshul, but not impossible. He’s rather sweet, as is revealed through his reaction to the eventual discovery that his intended is from – *gasp* – the barbaric North. Everyone knows how wild and bizarre those people are – they use magic, and probably eat their dead, and oh dear, couldn’t you try the spell again?

Meanwhile, a good ways North in Tarnia, the parents of a baby girl named Tasmin are having much the same reaction as the same spell is cast for their daughter: Not – *gasp* – the barbaric South! Why, everyone knows how uncivilized and bizarre those people are – they have hardly any magic at all, and they probably eat their dead, and … oh dear.

William, however, is sanguine about the whole thing, and starts off by writing to his wife-to-be right away (even though she won’t be able to read it for a while). And this begins a correspondence (one-sided until Tasmin is able to respond) that lasts some twenty-four years as William grows into his place as the eldest son of a well-to-merchant, eventually captaining a ship of his own through pirate-filled waters, and then – to the bafflement and indignation of his family, gives over his place in his father’s company to his younger brother Andrew in order to open a shop selling chocolates (“I’ve never liked anything half so well as I like chocolate.” – See? He’s not impossible! He’s wonderful). Meanwhile, in the North, Tasmin grows into her abilities as an Herb Mistress – and waits for William to send for her.

Which he doesn’t. Years pass after she comes of age, and their letters continue back and forth, often accompanying gifts both large and small, but he doesn’t call for her to come and marry. And then suddenly gossip reaches her family that – lucky girl! You’re off the hook! Your barbarian intended is sure to be hanged for murder, so – such good fortune! – now you never have to go into the wilds and marry one of them!

Far from the relief of her parents, Tasmin’s reaction is to pack a couple of bags and enlist the aid of the tribe of air sprites who have adopted her to whisk her southward. The William she has come to know from his letters can’t be a murderer – and she plans on proving it.

Russell Stovers (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There were some minor typos (I remember “gigging” instead of “giggling” (which I kind of liked), and a minor amount of punctuation abuse), but all in all far better than most Kindle books I seem to be reading lately. The writing is just this side of lyrical, with a sense of humor underlying it that reminded me – yes, it did: it reminded me of Robin McKinley. If you take a look at the ratings I’ve given Ms. McKinley’s books, you’ll see that this is high praise indeed.

Cindy Lynn Speer was able to make characters unpleasant and unlikable without turning them into cardboard cutouts or one-note things constructed of a few ugly tics and nasty characteristics strung together. William’s mother, for example, is thoroughly un-live-with-able, but there’s something behind it, a love for her family and reasons for her crankiness (“still, that don’t make it right”) which rounds out her character and gives her weight and depth in the narrative. The Bad Guy of the story could easily have been two-dimensional, but is neatly saved by clever writing. On the flip side, Tasmin isn’t perfect, and nor is William, and the doubts and pettinesses and impatient moments and so on make them more three-dimensional as well, and I was very fond of both of them.

Ms. Speer is also very good at keeping things from her readers. It’s a skill, that, or an art; it takes a fine touch to reveal a little bit of something, pique a reader’s interest, and then evade the topic for a while without ticking the reader off – and then do it again a couple more times before paying off the built-up suspense. That happens here: there’s a reason William gave up the sea besides a deep and abiding love for chocolate, and it’s not told until William is good and ready to explain it to Tasmin.

And that takes a little while, because (skip this part if you want to remain utterly spoiler-free, because this might impact your enjoyment of their relationship, and I don’t want to do that >>>) …

… these two don’t succumb to Insta-Love. I love the way their relationship is handled. They have been writing back and forth for years now, and may – may, mind you – have fallen in love through the correspondence. If so, neither is about to admit it, being as nobody’s ever confessed to loving the other, and so neither is really sure how the other feels. Also, Tasmin is at least a little injured by the fact that it’s taken so many years for William to send for her, and while she admits even to herself that she was happy at home doing good work that she loved, still: he could have sent for her when she turned eighteen, and that was a while ago, and it went unacknowledged. And that he made a major life decision without telling her first. He is a little uncertain about how she feels about leaving that good work that she loved – does she really want to give it up to come live an unmagical (or at least less magical) life with him? And then of course the whole circumstance of their finally meeting face to face – through the bars of a jail cell – are … awkward. He says he didn’t do it. She says she believes him (and that’s why she’s there). Does she? He says she can consider herself released from their contracted betrothal, and go home and fulfill her potential free of the shame of being attached to an accused murderer… She says she’ll do no such thing. But why? I was so happy with the landmine these two had to negotiate before they came anywhere near a happily-ever-at-all.

And here’s something I haven’t said much lately: I like the cover very much.

Related articles

• The Chocolatier’s Wife by Cindy Lynn Speer (bubblebathbooks.net)
• Do Women Love Chocolate More Than Men? (proflowers.com)

 

I hate Valentine’s Day.

I never realized how much red and pink clothing I have until I had to reject as much as I did this morning.  I used to wear pretty much all black and blue and gray, until I realized I was wearing all black and blue and gray (probably after watching What Not To Wear), and branched out (though except for one deep rose denim shirt, anything pink I own was a wrong-headed gift.  I rarely do pink).  I didn’t really intend to wear black today – that’s a statement I didn’t want to make, I simply declined to wear red or pink… but black was all I had clean and pressed and not from that end of the spectrum.  *shrug*

I’ll be honest – of course part of the reason I hate V-Day is that at no other time of year is the media’s attitude quite so in your face about how worthless life is without Love.  They don’t hedge about it, either: probably half a dozen tv shows both scripted and reality in the last year have featured some extremely wise person who earnestly proclaims that love is the only, only thing worth living for.

Thanks, then, my vacant life having been deemed worthless, I’ll just be slitting my wrists now – or should I go the folk ballad route and fling myself into a stream? 

In all seriousness, I’m astonished if the suicide rate does *not* increase around now.  It’s brutal out there. 

From: http://silhouettemasterpiecetheatre.com/

Most of the time, I’m fine with old maidenhood.  Spinsterhood.  Being on the shelf.  Though the world insists otherwise, I don’t see that I need someone else to make my life complete.  I’m sure it would be very pleasant, it never happened, so … It is, as they say, what it is.  It’s just now, with the relentless barrage of PDA’s, that a few shots make it through the barricades, and I feel it.  (The airing of Emma right on target to hit me during the monthly Slough of Despond didn’t help, I have to say.)

But apart from that basic bitterness, Feb. 14 is a very bad anniversary.  It was four years ago today that the announcement went up on the original Board Which Shall Remain Nameless that instead of doing as they’d been promising for the four years I’d been a member and fixing the original message boards so that they didn’t crash every fourteen minutes, they were going to abandon ship and move to a new …everything.  And that was the beginning of the end, for me at least, though I know several people I cared about dropped away much more quietly than I did at the same time.  It was broke, and they didn’t fix it – they kicked it to the curb and started over, and the new board was shiny and new – and it was chrome and steel where the old boards were oak-panelled and comfy (if somewhat threadbare in places).  I really do hate Valentine’s Day. 

Mainly though, and as long as I can remember, there is always the simple fact that … I don’t get it.  Even if I were in a relationship, I can’t see myself being happy because he, having been poked and prodded and nudged and reminded by every commercial and DJ and newsanchor for the past two weeks, arrived with flowers and chocolate.  I worked retail too long: I saw the men who flocked into the store just before closing on February 13 – and, even better, closing on Feb. 14 – to pick up the random pink stuffed whatever or box of anything they could find.  I always derived some sadistic pleasure that a good many of these guys had to choose between the cheap stuff that tasted like something made by people who had heard of chocolate and never tasted it, and the great big huge expensive heart boxes – because that was all that was left.  Oh, and the monster two-foot high cards, also all that was left.  Hee.  That was fun.  But … isn’t this sort of like someone apologizing only after having it clearly pointed out that an apology was owed?  “I’m sorry for whatever it is I’m supposed to be sorry for”?  If it’s not something done with intent, what’s the point?  “I demand a present!”  “What would you like?”  “That! *points*”  “If the six hundred thousand commercials and your nagging are enough to remind me, I will buy it, just to keep out of the doghouse.”  Why?  Just to create an excellent opportunity to make people miserable when they forget or are forgotten (or have no one to forget or be forgotten by)? 

Oh, and balloons?  I hate balloons. 

On the sitcom The Middle, the father, Mike, spent the whole episode last week ranting about how V-Day is a vast gimmick cooked up by the greeting card companies and chocolate makers to drum up business.  And he’s wrong how?  And have you seen the price of greeting cards lately?  

http://a.abc.com/media/_global/swf/embed/2.6.5/SFP_Walt.swf

That’s it, I’m shuttin’ it down!  You guys shouldn’t be celebrating Valentine’s Day anyway because it’s a scam cooked up by the greeting card companies.  You know what you should be doing?  You should be studying.  ‘Cause guess what they’re doing in China right now?  They are doing math, and they are learning how to be CEO’s of greeting card companies so they can sell us American’s a heart-shaped load o’ crap!

Thing is, though, I can’t help but think I would be either really easy (so to speak) or really difficult on V-Day.  I wouldn’t want flowers – I hate cut flowers, as they’re dead in a day or so, and I’m not good with plants (black thumb).  A stuffed thing?  Unless it’s astonishingly adorable – and I have been known on occasion to find certain fluffy creatures irresisitible – no.  I’m an adult.  I have no use for an ugly pink whatever with something sappy stitched on it.  Chocolate – sure, any time, but I am going to raise an eyebrow if the best a man can do is a pre-wrapped box of Russell Stover.  (I can’t imagine who the appropriate recipient is for a pre-wrapped box of Russell Stover; secretary?  Nurse at a relative’s bedside?  Kid’s teacher?  Even then … Oh, sorry to have put you to so much trouble – wasn’t there something you could have put less effort into? /sarcasm)  Good chocolate, now – that shows at least a little thought.  As for jewelry … Again, I’m either particularly easy or hard, because I don’t like gold and wouldn’t want diamonds.  I’m a simple soul; I wouldn’t ever want expensive jewelry.  What on earth would I do with it?  And I’m hell on jewelry; I can’t tell you how many half-pairs of earrings I own, because the other half vanished from my ear.  My favorite pendant first broke and then vanished entirely; it was a little knight, 1″ tall, whose arms and legs were jointed and whose tiny visor went up to reveal his (rough-carved) face.  All I have now is the arm that snapped off.  So that’s one strike against jewelry – if I were to wear something pricey I’d be a nervous wreck.  Most of all, though, I think both eyebrows would rise if someone were to gift me with one of those mass-produced diamond-studded things for which commercials flood the airwaves around now and every other remotely gift-y holiday.  (Trick or treat?  Treat!  Give your special someone an Open Hearts necklace for Halloween!)  I can’t help but wonder why in the world I would want the same piece of jewelry 321,610 other women have been given over the last twenty-eight or so holidays.  Something hand-made, something unique – not necessarily expensive: go to eBay and search for “steampunk”, and good things appear - would, to me, mean a huge amount more than some kind of diamond-chip-crusted whatever empty of meaning. 

And I know I’m beginning to sound male here, but … the connection between the day and the martyr – who was apparently beheaded, unless you mean one of the other ones – is specious.  There might be some kind of connection to Lupercalia – and having read Roma, that’s not exactly in keeping with what the day is now.  There would be mass arrests if Lupercalia was celebrated properly.  It’s all a great deal like Coca Cola creating the modern image and pervasiveness of Santa Claus and diamonds being force-fed to the country as THE engagement ring: it’s all a marketing campaign that would do Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce proud.   I think that’s sad.