The story line really caught my eye. A cynical lead character who has lost those she loved all grown up with a chocolate shop in Gig Harbor Washington. Lots of nice NW references that make me miss the place even more. Anyway, her wicked wit is served up in fortune cookies that are dipped in unsweetened cocoa and have handwritten "misfortunes" in them. The lost love returns to try to explain why he dumped her a week, A WEEK, before their wedding but she resists him with a challenge. Nice little book of miscommunications, misplaced guilt, and realistic characters. ( )

It's well enough written, but I kept waiting for it to be a story I wanted to read. It has all the elements of a delightful, magical tale: romance, cooking, chocolate. But alas, instead it's entirely consumed by guilt and tragedy, tragedy and guilt. Blah. At first I also found it completely unbelievable that the main character would be willing to talk to the person who jilted her the week before her wedding. That's before I realized that the entire romance before the wedding culminated in nothing more than a perfectly chaste kiss and a proposal. How incredibly boring. ( )

Sophie doesn't believe happiness last. When Garrett her challenges her that he can get 100 letters showing happiness can last, Sophie is very quick to find fault with the letters.

Sophie and the others are all interconnected through the accident that killed her parents. ( )

Twenty years ago, on her 9th birthday, Sohpia lost her parents & grandmother to a fatal car accident. A year ago her fiance Garrett Black walked away from their wedding without explanation.

Sophia is now the owner of Choclat' de Soph, where she is famous for the "Misfortune Cookies" she makes...it is her 29th birthday and in walks Garrett asking for a date so that he might explain the circumstances of his "fleet". Sophia agrees on the condition that Garrett place an ad in the local paper: "WANTED HAPPINESS: Lasting happiness only. Nothing that fleets. Please send suggestions to...." and that she receives 100 responses of non-fleeting happiness, of which she will be the sole judge.

Basically, I enjoyed the love story.....but there was so much TRAGEDY and Pain and Loss and Sadness. What made me not rate this 4 Stars was that I found the story, the intertwining of events & characters to be overly contrived. Sophia's Foster Mother kept "arranging" things and then harping on the events being acts of "Providence" and towards the end of the book I was tired of it.

I did like the Misfortunes that began each chapter.

******************Some MisFortunes************************
"Have patience, rainy days will soon return"

"Something you lost will soon turn up, but some lost things are better unfound"

"You'll never really be happy. How sad"

"You will soon fall in love. Caution: when people fall, something usually breaks"

"Your doubts about the future are easily explained. You're paranoid"

"Compel yourself to something you wouldn't normally do, because what you normally do doesn't seem to be working"

"Some people are lucky in love. You aren't one of them"

"When you speak honestly and openly, people truly listen. They don't believe you, but at least you have their attention"
( )

Fun, light read. Even though the characters went through some heavy misfortune, most of the story is light. The characters were likeable, and while the end was predictable, the journey was fun. ( )