.jpg)
Reviewed by Darcie Czajkowski
Young, naïve, and inexperienced, Bernadette “Bernie” Maguire has a
mission when she and her best friend Lisa travel to Fribourg, Switzerland for
their junior year of college. Bernie’s
goal of losing her virginity proves easy, too easy in fact, when she sets her
sights on Karl Berset, an attractive Swiss banker. She willingly becomes intimate with him, but
after a single passionate weekend together, he disappears from her life and
from Fribourg entirely.
Almost immediately, Bernie knows she is pregnant. She quietly keeps her secret, initially
sharing only with Lisa and Lisa’s landlady, Erika Stangl. She goes about her normal life, attending classes,
spending time with Lisa, and even drinking the occasional beer with her
classmates at Café des Espouses in town.
But events start to spiral further out of control when Bernie
becomes intimate with a classmate who is unaware of her pregnancy, experiences
the loss of someone close to her, and stumbles upon the shocking reason why Karl
vanished from her life, as if she had imagined their affair altogether.
Twenty-three years later, Bernie is still dealing with the
consequences of those transient moments with Karl. Her life is an emotional mess and, after her
mother’s passing, she decides that she no longer wants to live her life in a
self-destructive way. With her aunt in
tow, Bernie returns to Fribourg and, upon arriving at Hotel de la Rose, she finds
her past literally staring back at her.
Will Bernie have the courage to face the decisions she made all
those years ago? Will she be able to
reconcile the girl who first landed in Switzerland with the woman she is now,
someone who has made many mistakes but wants to change her life for the better?
Chocolate
for Breakfast starts as a simple adventure abroad and unfurls into a dramatic,
heartwarming story which continues in the sequel, Chocolate Fondue. These
books must be read together in order to
experience and appreciate Bernie’s drastic character development. Chocolate
for Breakfast is the place to start to fully understand how the choices
Bernie made in Fribourg sent her spiraling down the wrong path, but Chocolate Fondue is where the complexity
and depth of Bernie’s character truly come alive and the full breadth of Martha
Reynolds’ skill as a writer is on display.
In the sequel, Martha does a remarkable job of weaving together two
storylines and making the reader want to keep reading to find out how the
stories will be resolved. A captivating
story has a twist around every corner and keeps the reader wondering what will
happen next, both of which Martha accomplishes with aplomb. I was hooked from beginning until the end and,
who wouldn’t be, when chocolate is involved.
.jpg)
Martha
Reynolds is the author of three novels: the award-winning CHOCOLATE FOR
BREAKFAST; its sequel, CHOCOLATE FONDUE; and the newly-published BITS OF BROKEN
GLASS. All books are available through Amazon in digital and print versions.
Coming soon:
the third and final book in the 'chocolate' series, BITTERSWEET CHOCOLATE.
She and her
husband live in Rhode Island, never far from the ocean.
Read and follow the
writings of Martha at
