New Free Chocolate Sex
A Novel
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
To make herself feel better, Samantha started running through all the positive aspects of the situation. For example, being locked in a chocolate factory would make an excellent basis for a magazine story....But each time she glanced in Matt's direction, she felt a thrill of anxiety pass through her, and all thoughts of her documentary dissolved. No matter how she tried, it was going to be impossible to view this as a solely journalistic experience.
Can your sworn enemy become your romantic obsession? Keith Lowe, the wickedly witty author of Tunnel Vision, shows that it can happen in this enchanting story of a man and a woman who learn that love is indeed the least predictable flavor in life's box of chocolates.
Matt, the brilliant young marketing director of Trundel & Barr, one of the United States' leading confectioners, loves chocolate. To him it represents sensuousness and innocent joy; it is to be adored, worshipped, and exploited at every opportunity. For Samantha, however, chocolate represents something more sinister. Working on a TV documentary, she's discovered that the subject is not as sweet as she thought: While Western children cram their faces with candy bars, African children are working in horrendous conditions to produce them. Since Matt's company is one of the worst offenders, Sam soon decides it's her mission to expose it and, in the process, destroy Matt.
Then, by accident or fate, Sam and Matt find themselves locked in the extremely close quarters of the Trundel & Barr chocolate factory. As their repeated attempts to escape from the factory fail, they realize that they are stuck with each other -- and they are finally forced to take a good look at the real reasons why they find it so difficult to get along.
Both spirited and seductive, New Free Chocolate Sex is the perfect read for anyone who finds a smart romantic comedy to be the sweetest treat of all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lowe dips into the world of chocolate production in his second novel (after 2001's Tunnel Vision), a palatable romance with a titillating title and a political message. Journalist Samantha Blackwood has just returned from Africa, where she documented the plight of exploited child workers on cocoa plantations. Matt Dyson is the hotshot marketing director at the chocolate behemoth Trundel & Barr. In the thick of New York City's chocolate show, where pampered children gorge on the sweet stuff, Samantha laments the cruel irony of it alland first locks eyes with Matt, who's nursing a few wounds himself and knows nothing of his company's shady labor practices. Comical clashes and romantic tension build as Samantha presses Matt into an interview, putting his unflappable cool to the test. When a worker strike summons each one to the company's chocolate factory in Baltimore, the duo end up locked inside for the weekend. Amid the vats of chocolate, enough sparks fly to trigger a meltdown, and a bitter situation turns decidedly sweeterfor the couple, if not for the reader. A wellmeaning and impassioned attempt to enlighten us about the machinations of marketers and the dark provenance of our chocolate treats (child slaves in the Cote d'Ivoire are bought for the equivalent of $15or "the price of about twentyfive chocolate bars") dissolves into a love story simultaneously conventional and unbelievable. Agent, Simon Trewin.
