Esmée is a very strong and accomplished woman for the time period, and the book is better for it. The technique of chocolate making in colonial times is fascinating, and I found myself craving chocolate while Esmée was creating her confections. The history of the time is well researched. It does pick up in the second half of the story. The writing is beautiful, but the plot moves slowly at times. Bitter stings of lost love and hope of a new start are complicated even more by news of impending war. This is a well-written historical romance, and the dialogue rings true to the period. As war with the French seems more and more likely, will Esmée and Henri find a new peace of their own? When Henri returns to complete a lighthouse in Chesapeake Bay, a former dream of theirs, Esmée is more shaken than she lets on. Now considered a spinster and determined to forget him, she is running her mother’s chocolate shop and working on new recipes. In 1755 York, Virginia, 28-year-old chocolatier Esmée Shaw has never quite gotten over her former fiancé, Captain Henri Lennox, although it has been ten years. This is another one of the books I reviewed for the February edition of Historical Novels Review, the magazine of the Historical Novel Society.
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