Christmas magic and chocolate, the most perfect combo EVER!!!

Synopsis

Sometimes you just need a little Christmas magic to make your wishes come true…

When master chocolatier, Charlee, takes the leap to move to the picturesque seaside town of Whitsborough Bay, she is determined to follow in her grandfather’s footsteps and set up a chocolate shop.

Luckily, she finds the perfect location for Charlee’s Chocolates on beautiful Castle Street… Now she just has to refurbish it in time for Christmas!

With a useless boyfriend and countless DIY disasters, Charlee doesn’t know if she’ll make it in time. With no ‘traditional’ family to support her, she feels lost in her new surroundings and the secrets of the past are weighing her down.

But the warmth and festive spirit of the Whitsborough Bay community will surprise her, and when plumber, Matt, comes to the rescue, it might be that all of Charlee’s dreams could come true this Christmas, and she could learn what family really means…

Escape to Castle Street for the perfect uplifting, festive read from top 10 bestseller Jessica Redland.

Christmas Wishes at the Chocolate Shop was originally released as Charlee and the Chocolate Shop. Now re-released with a new title and new cover, this version has been freshly edited and features several new chapters.

My review

After losing her Nana, master chocolatier Charlee decides to move with her boyfriend Ricky to Whitborough Bay. Even if she moved away, she is determined to step into her grandfather’s footsteps and open a chocolate shop.
In Castle Street she finds the perfect location for Charlee’s Chocolates and now she is having a fight against time to have everything ready before Christmas.
Instead of working together with Ricky on the place, Charlee is working there alone, with many disasters. Luckily, she can count on the Whitborough Bay community with helping hands, and especially plumber Matt’s help is very welcome.
And Matt being kind and very attractive surely is an extra nice surprise. Unfortunately Matt is engaged and totally off limits…
But moving to Whitborough Bay means a new start for Charlee anyway, where she will learn what love and family truly means.

The preparations I made before I started reading this book:

·         MANY tissues: CHECK

·         Comfort food, aka lots of chocolate: CHECK

·         Soft pillow to hug when it’s getting too much: CHECK

Now, before Belgium goes again in a total panic attack like it did with the toilet paper during the pandemic, for once I didn’t need the tissues!
And before you think that tissues are mandatory to make me fall totally in love with a Jessica Redland book, it’s not!

I absolutely loved returning to Whitborough Bay and I just adored Charlee’s story!

Even if Charlee is heartbroken after her Nana died, she seems to have it all. even if at work she has to face her nemesis, working with chocolate is her passion and she has found the perfect boyfriend in Ricky.
And if moving is the solution for all yours and your boyfriends problems, wouldn’t you just do the same?

My heart broke to see how Ricky, instead of being a more active presence, became more and more invisible, and even became someone I truly didn’t like (and that’s even before the real nastiness was revealed!) while Charlee was trying to so hard to do her best to make things work.

Charlee is the kind of person I want to be or at least have in my life myself. Yes, her mother abandoned her as a baby with her grandparents, but she has been truly loved by them. But she is a great friend to have around and seeing her work her magic surely made me like her even more!
Even in Castle Street, with the amazing community, she quickly makes new friends and is making sure that she doesn’t step on anyone’s toes.

And Matt… amazing wonderful sweet kind generous funny Matt… he’s absolutely the kind of man I would fall in love myself! If Jessica has the mould for him somewhere stored, can I please borrow it???

This story was wonderful, just as I expected it to be. I have to say, I was a bit surprised when suddenly we jumped a year ahead, because I felt there was so much more I wanted to discover in that year we don’t know that much about.
But I found it sweet and nice to see how eventually, not that much has changed for Charlee. She is still happy with her Chocolate Shop, she is loved by the whole community and her feelings for Matt not only are still there, but now we have proof that’s is actually the real thing!

Even if in the ending things went a teeny bit too fast for my liking (I cannot say what exactly without giving any spoilers) but on the other hand, it shows us the genuinity of it and how right it all is.

There are several shocks in this story, a few bad ones, but most are very surprising and good ones. I had several negative opinions about characters in the book. And some remained the same, but I had to seriously adjust a greater part of them. It’s always easy to judge someone when you don’t know the whole story, but seeing the truth made me see how wrong I was. And those who I judges wrongly were easily accepted in my poor heart, that is just too small for all the amazing characters this author manages to make up!

I devoured this whole book, being in a constant dilemma… stop reading after the finished chapter, prolonging the joy I had over several days, or read just that one (or two, three, four, five,…) more chapters because I wanted to spend more time with these wonderful people?

I honestly don’t know how Jessica Redland manages to keep on writing such marvellous books. I always have this small fear that the book I’m going to start will be little less better than the previous one. But then my fears are unfounded, because it’s again a marvellous story, with marvellous yet normal people!