Book Review: The Whizz Pop Chocolate Shop

The Whizz Pop Chocolate Shop

Novel by Kate Saunders

My 7-year old just started reading books by herself this year and I was looking for an opportunity to give her a longer read that still held her interest. She’s clearly beyond The Magic Tree House books but the only book that’s kept her attention from start to finish so far has been The Magic Faraway tree.

For this book, it helped that my daughter is an extreme choco-maniac because as soon as she saw the cover, she wanted to spread it on toast or lick it or scratch and sniff. Indeed when you give a book about a chocolate shop to a little girl who eats Nutella at breakfast every day, you know sparks (and chocolate smears) are going to fly.

The story starts on a sweet note: 18 Skittle Street is the most magical street in London, a street where the Spoffard family inherits a house with a boarded-up chocolate shop at street level. Obviously when you inherit a magical house in London, you’re in for a lot of adventures. As in, 293 pages of chocolate-related thrills, family feuds and visits at the Secret Ministry of the Unexplained (SMU) in the M16 building. That’s the longest book my 7-year old has read so far but the action keeps her reading night after night.

Such a fun read! I read a few chapters with my daughter and she explained to me in great detail how so and so were good guys and so and so were spies and how it was terrible that there was a murder story too but she hoped the family would find the recipe for Isadore’s magical chocolate in the end because how can you keep goblins away without magic fudge? I mean, come on!

What type of action? How about when the kids had to dive into the Thames River to find golden chocolate molds? That sounded like quite an adventure. Or when they flew from the house to the hospital? Or when they discovered their grandma was a Jamaican witch? Oops, I’ve said too much because when there’s witches there’s also magic. When my 7-year old read that this chocolate fudge could have everlasting magic qualities, that was definitely good news in her book. The book also features animal spies and a good plot trick that was too because my daughter’s favorite parts involve Demerara the invisible cat or Spike the talking rat.

The Whizz Pop Chocolate Shop is a fun book for would-be spys, chocolate lovers and young fans of mystery.

Thank you to Random House for sending me a review copy of this book.