Sheila Roberts Better Than Chocolate Blog Tour with a Review

I am so excited to have Sheila Roberts here with a review on Paranormal and Romantic Suspense Reviews.

Sheila Roberts is currently touring to promote her new release Better Than Chocolate.

For more information about the book, please visit http://www.sheilasplace.com

Thank you Sheila and Pump Up Your Book Promotions for letting me join your blog tour with a Review.

About Sheila Roberts

Sheila Roberts lives on a lake in the Pacific Northwest. She’s happily married and has three children. She’s been writing since 1989, but she did lots of things before settling in to her writing career, including owning a singing telegram company and playing in a band. Her band days are over, but she still enjoys writing songs. When she’s not speaking to women’s groups or at conferences or hanging out with her girlfriends she can be found writing about those things near and dear to women’s hearts: family, friends, and chocolate.

Better Than Chocolate (Life in Icicle Falls) [Mass Market Paperback]
Sweet Dreams Chocolate Company has been in the Sterling family for generations, ever since Great-Grandma Rose literally dreamed up her first fabulous recipe. But now it looks as if they're about to lose Sweet Dreams to the bank — and that would be a disaster, not only for the family but for the town of Icicle Falls, Washington. Can Samantha, the oldest daughter and new head of the company, come up with a way to save it?

After Samantha does some brainstorming with her mother and sisters, inspiration strikes. They'll have a chocolate festival! Time's running out, but the Sterling women are determined and the town's behind them, so everything's bound to go smoothly ….

Or not. Events seem to be conspiring against Samantha, and her mother's attempts to help aren't helping. To make matters worse, the fate of her company is in the hands of her archenemy, Blake Preston, the bank manager with the football-hero good looks. It's enough to drive her to chocolate. But Blake's also enough to convince her that (believe it or not) there's something even better than chocolate.

My Review:
Samantha Sterling is head of the Sweet Dreams Chocolate Company since her stepfather Waldo recently died.  He ran the company to the ground and she just recently found out that she needs to pay back the full bank loan within the next couple of months.  She is really hoping the new bank manager will extend their loan for another six months.

Blake Preston has recently moved back to Icicle Falls as the new bank manager.  He was sent to take over the bank to help them out of the hole his predecessor got them into.  The bank is quite strict about paying back their loans.  Blake feels bad when he denies extending Sweet Dreams bank loan but he really likes Samantha and is determined to help her save her family company.

The family was hoping they would be able to use Waldo's life insurance but they find out he has none.  They all brainstorm and come up with a community chocolate festival with all the businesses helping them out.  They also decide to host a Mr. Dreamy Contest and hope it will bring in a lot of tourists which it does and proves to be quite popular.

I didn't really like how Samantha treated Blake like it's his fault Sweet Dreams is going under.  She would ignore him or yell at him even though he tried to explain his reason for not being able to extend the loan.  Everyone else believes he's a really good guy and catch.

I admire Blake's determination to prove to Samantha that he wants to help her.  I'm surprised that he took all that abuse and he's really nice guy.

Loved the recipes at the end of the book!