Chocolate Chocolate Moons

In this futuristic story of gourmet food and shady interplanetary business deals, Molly Marbles seeks to find her place in the world, or rather, in the solar system. Molly is an overweight Earth woman in a universe that prizes the tall, thin figures of those born and raised on low-gravity heavenly bodies, such as Mars. Everything changes for her when she begins college on the Moon. She no longer worries about dieting, and she can begin to focus on her passion for cooking and eating delicacies, such as duck breast in a coriander fig sauce.

She and her husband suddenly find themselves penniless and forced to move to Mars, where nearly everyone is thin and they only eat food supplements, if they eat anything at all. Molly once again finds herself on the outside looking in, but when she takes a job in security at Culinary Institute of Mars, home of the Candy Universe, Molly finds her niche. Unfortunately, Molly discovers that her favorite candy, Chocolate Chocolate Moons, is poisoned! She and her friends must catch the candy-poisoning culprits and ensure they receive their just desserts!

Jackie Kingon’s stuffs her writing full of puns, plays on words, and food similes. For example, the characters wear Dolce and Banana, and Molly drives along the Carpal Tunnel to get to the mall. When I first began reading, I thought, “This book is so silly!” but I got into the spirit of it and laughed out loud throughout the whole story. It is a quick read, and the foodie version of Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair. Molly is an instantly likeable character, and Kingon’s wordplay is so fun, it is hard to resist this quirky novel.