A review by carissaabc
The Whizz Pop Chocolate Shop by Kate Saunders

1.0

I wanted to like this book. I really did. Come on, what a GREAT title! What a lovely cover! What a fun premise (kids inherit their long lost relatives chocolate shop only to discover that it's magical!)! But... I couldn't even finish it. The pacing is horrible. I felt like I was on a runaway pony with no saddle and also the pony was falling apart a bit. I can't even put my finger exactly on what was so awful about it (maybe because everything was so convenient? here's an example: they're supposed to be searching for a candy mold made of gold that probably is at the bottom of a river inside a submerged train car that wrecked ages and ages ago. Since the wreck, people have been searching for this mold, but no one has been able to find it. The children (who have received no training, but are apparently "dripping with magic") are sent underwater (after getting one day of scuba lessons), enter the submerged train car (after breaking out the glass window which had had a hole already but it was too small to enter through -- haven't people already searched inside this vehicle? Why is there no entry yet?), hold hands and bingo-bango, the mold reveals itself from the depths. Case solved! But then the evil, immortal uncle shows up and steals the mold and kidnaps the brother. And that was around page 60 of an approximately 300 page book.) but I can't even be bothered to finish the book and that's rare for me.