Death by Choc-Lit (Summer 2018): Book 1

[KeithLeMonde]

Discussion thread for group 2, book 1

[Chewbecca]

Hello all - this is my book choice.

I read this book on holiday last summer after it was passed on to me by a stranger in a cooking group I'm in. I'm afraid I am terrible at remembering details of books. However, what I do remember is the feeling of loving being immersed in this book, going through the phases of life with the characters and curling up with it. I still have clear images in my head of the 3 main characters and of Guernsey and New Zealand, as well as the boat & the boat's crew. I also remember feeling sad that I finished the book and leaving behind the story.

Hope you enjoy it too. It is quite long!

[FreshEyre]

I've just finished this one - it's a bit of an epic read but I'm glad I stuck with it. It took me a while to slow down to the pace of the book and it wasn't one that I found easy to dip in and out of.

This is a lovely book, very well written and I found myself desperately wanting to know what happens to the three main characters. I enjoyed the fact that it was set in Guernsey and New Zealand and learnt a lot about the history of New Zealand in the early days of the settlers that I'd never considered before. Thinking about it now, I'm not sure how much I actually liked the main characters and I found William completely infuriating at times. 'Old Nick' is the real hero!

I have to admit that I did find myself skimming through some of the more flowery, descriptive and reflective bits (I think that says more about me than the book) and my only criticism is that for me it probably could have been 100 pages shorter and lost none of the story.

On the whole, I would give it 7/10. Thank you for choosing it, Chewbecca - reading something that I wouldn't normally choose is exactly why I joined the book swap.