Reviewed by Vicki
TITLE: Baker’s Dozen
AUTHOR: Dallas Coleman
PUBLISHER: Torquere Press
LENGTH: 152 pages
BLURB:
Bryan has been making sweets for a long time. Too long, maybe, especially when he’s missing his dead lover. But he has a calling, a special talent that makes his confections more than they seem. Just the thing to help sweeten a life here, spice up another there.
Magical truffles make for wonderful stories from their customers, and assistant James is pleased for the people Bryan helps, but he thinks his maddening boss needs a little help in the happiness department. Can he help Bryan in and out of the kitchen?
REVIEW:
What an odd story! I picked this one for November’s theme week, which is all about food…. I’m a big fan of chocolate so I searched Goodreads for a book and found Baker’s Dozen. The plot sounded interesting, and come on, chocolate? Yes!
Bryan has a magical talent, and I do mean magical. He makes magic truffles. He has been for many, many years, now working with an apprentice named James. The two of them make lovely sweets for couples. So this story follows the couples as they enjoy their sweets from Bryan.
Unfortunately there isn’t enough to it to really be interesting. We see Bryan and James flirting and making the chocolate for a specific person or couple, then we see the little short story of the couple. But the chocolate didn’t really do anything for the couples. Yes, they were a tasty treat, but other than one couple they didn’t seem to have any magical quality. They didn’t solve any issues, create any magic, bring anyone together, or anything really interesting. The short stories were too short, not enough time for me to really care about the characters. There were a couple that had the potential to be interesting but there wasn’t enough to them. Some had sex, but not many.
Then there is the flirting and the story between Bryan and James. That had the potential to be very interesting, but it was broken up so much by the short stories that I didn’t feel like I had a chance to know them enough to care one way or the other. The ending was really good, it was the best part, but by then I was so bored it just slipped on by me…. I wanted to know more about Bryan, how this all came about, who he really was, what started this, etc. That would have been more interesting to me than so many short stories. And I wanted to chocolates to be magic and actually do something for the couples, one did and it was really cool, but the rest not so much. Sex magic, relationship magic, bring them together, something.
The writing wasn’t bad, not great but not bad, the plot had so much potential that didn’t manifest for me, the characters were interesting but there wasn’t enough about any of them to truly develop them. The chocolate sounded yummy and I wanted it! I did like the ending though!
RATING: 
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