Better Than Chocolate Hardback - 2005

Be careful what you wish for ...

Food writer Annie Wilkins is about to step on the express elevator up to wealth and fame. Her husband, Tom, a research scientist, has done the impossible. He's invented the ultimate indulgence: fat-free, carb-free, calorie-free chocolate that tastes like the real thing ... only better! When Tom's company proposes using Annie and Tom as the product's spokespeople, Annie thinks she's hit the jackpot. Suddenly, she's getting the life most people can only dream of! Goodbye to writing walleye-on-a-stick articles for Minnesota Menus! Hello to showcase houses and a (mini)celebrity lifestyle rubbing elbows with the hoi polloi. Make room for new furniture, pots of melting chocolate, glossy pictures of America's new fabulous couple -- and a gorgeous remade Annie.

As Annie soon learns, fame does have its price. She's under corporate orders to lose twenty pounds ... make that twenty-five (the cameras!). And her hair? All wrong. Then there's her official workspace -- a kitchen set. And a lovable husband who has become, overnight, America's Sexiest Scientist. Not to mention her suddenly worldly children, an amorous French chef, a P.R. staffer in permanent overdrive, and a whole new milieu requiring her to spend, spend, spend. Annie's wickedly funny and all-too-believable flirtation with life at the top proves that just when she thinks What could possibly go wrong?, something certainly does! Now she has to find a way to save her sanity, her marriage, and her life.

A funny, contemporary fairy tale that is as entertaining as it is enlightening, Better Than Chocolate is a charming, dead-on story that reminds us of what's truly valuable.