Chocolate Cake For Breakfast
Danielle Hawkins
Allen & Unwin
2013, 361p
Uncorrected proof copy courtesy of the publisher/The Reading Room.com
Rural New Zealand vet Helen McBain is taking a breather at a party escaping a boring local when she trips over a very tall man outside. Unthinkingly, she asks him what he does for a living only to discover after he says playing rubgy, that he is national hero Mark Tipene, rugby union player for the Auckland Blues and also the All Blacks. Despite the fact that she had absolutely no idea who he was at first meeting (or perhaps because of it) Mark is interested in Helen and he ends up turning up at her work the next day to ask her out.
In between Mark’s rugby commitments and Helen’s busy calving season they find time to begin a fledgling romance. Things are going well, even though Helen is insecure about what Mark could possibly want with someone like her when he could have all manner of blonde, thin, tanned WAG-wannabes. However then an unexpected surprise throws a spanner in the works and Helen finds herself freaking out over everything, most of all making sure that Mark doesn’t feel guilted or pressured into staying.
I loved this book. On the day I started it, I had read a really quick novel in the afternoon, only 177p so I was at a bit of a loss for something to do so I picked up this in order to just read a bit and get started. I ended up ignoring my family for most of the rest of the evening in order to finish it because I couldn’t put it down. It’s funny and clever and taps into that ‘hero falling in love with an average girl’ storyline that works so well in a romantic comedy.
Helen is a country vet specialising in large animals and on her and Mark’s first date she gets a call out that results in them both having to deliver a dead calf from inside the cow. It’s rather graphic and all together very eye opening – I had no idea that these sorts of things happened and that would be how a vet delivered a stillborn calf that had been unfortunately dead for several days. Mark shows a strong stomach during what must’ve been a rather disgusting procedure in both vision and smell and if I were Helen, I’d probably expect to never see someone again after that. However it doesn’t daunt Mark in the slightest and Helen is surprised to find herself slipping into a relationship with the world’s best rugby union lock. Whatever it is that locks do.
I have to admit, I have no idea what it is that locks do. Of the three relatively popular games we call “football” here (I’m not counting soccer although some do call that football as well), rugby union is the one I know least about. I actually don’t really understand the rules (why do they all fall on each other in a big pile? What is that?). This book doesn’t really shed any light on that and I think that the games take up probably a perfect amount of time in the book. Mark is often playing abroad as is the case these days for someone who plays for their country and Helen, not the world’s biggest rugby fan before meeting Mark tends to only watch to make sure he doesn’t get pulverized during the game. The only thing I know about the All Blacks is that they perform the haka before each match and that’s pretty much the best bit! It’s unfortunate that there’s no mention of that here. You definitely don’t have to be a fan or care about rugby union to enjoy this book but it is a bit of a nice look at the WAG phenomenon and gives Helen a legitimate insecurity. If New Zealand is anything like here, they’d be inundated with the WAGs and what they’re doing, wearing etc and she sticks her hands inside cows for a living. But what I loved about this book was that there was no attempt to make the reader see that Helen was rather stunning and everyone saw it except her. She was what she was – and Mark liked her for that. She was down to earth and funny and a bit awkward and Mark was the sort who seemed to not really embrace the limelight any more. He definitely partied and hooked up when he was younger but you got the impression that he was over that and that he was thinking about his future. He was aware that he only had probably a few years left playing rugby professionally and that he was ready to start implementing the next stage of his life. Probably not as quickly as it played out in the book but he still showed a readiness, when Helen let him and gave him a chance. And I think that part of the story played out with a lot of realism. Both of them are unsure and freaked out a bit, they fight, they do the wrong thing, they end up hurting each other. But then they sort it out and try again. And it works.
Chocolate Cake For Breakfast is one of the most enjoyable novels I’ve read in a while, I can’t remember the last time I read one that made me laugh out loud this often. I loved Helen and loved her family, who are all rather eccentric in their individual ways. Her job added a lot of colour (and information – what has been imagined can never be unimagined) and the romance was both sweet and well written. I’ve got to get behind a book with a title such as this one – I remember when I was at university and I would head back to my dorm, my nan would make me a chocolate cake. And for the next 3-4 mornings, chocolate cake is what I would eat for breakfast simply because it was there, it was easy and quite frankly, who wouldn’t want chocolate cake for breakfast? This book is like chocolate cake for breakfast: addictive. And now I need to track down Danielle Hawkins’ first novel, Dinner At Rose’s as soon as possible because I’m pretty sure I’ll like that too.
9/10
Book #304 of 2013
This is the 6th and final book for my What’s In A Name?6 Challenge, filling in the category of something you might find in the kitchen. You can quite often find chocolate cake in mine…..if you look hard enough! Challenge complete!
The Wild Girl, by Kate Forsyth. Kate Forsyth writes so beautifully – her books retelling fairy tales truly are masterpieces. For anyone who read and loved Bitter Greens then you definitely need to read this one too. It’s a fabulous story, utterly engaging.
The People Smuggler, by Robin De Crespigny. I don’t read much non-fiction, although I probably read more in 2013 than I have in the past 10 years. There were a few really good choices, but ultimately I decided to go with this one because I think it presents such a different side to the refugee and boat people crisis from what a lot of people (especially those in power) would have us believe. It’s very interesting and very well done.
Life In Outer Space, by Melissa Keil. A wonderfully quirky and funny YA novel that was recommended to me by the fabulous Mandee from 
Lick, by Kylie Scott. This one took the eBook world by storm and it wasn’t hard to see why. It taps in to a lot of those fantasy style stories: waking up married in Vegas, finding out your brand new husband is actually the super hot guitarist of a well known band…. etc. And then there’s the issues, which are awesome. Fantastic writing, sexy and there’s more to come!
Outback Dreams, by Rachael Johns. I read a lot of fabulous rural romances this year and it was hard choosing one to include in this list but in the end I went with this one because I really enjoyed a slightly different take on the friends-to-lovers and I thought the community created was awesome and I liked the way in which it explored some issues. It’s also first of a trilogy so the bonus is we get to return to the setting twice more next year.
Hate Is Such A Strong Word, by Sarah Ayoub. I’ve mentioned this book a lot lately but I have to include it here. I think at times it’s difficult for some people to understand what it might be like for first generation migrants who are caught between their parents culture and the culture of their new country. This book does an excellent job of exploring that with some sweet teen romance thrown in. Was a winner for me.
The Fiery Heart, by Richelle Mead. I have to admit, I didn’t fall in love with this series right away, like I did with Vampire Academy. It took a little while for Mead to convince me of everything she had going on here but this book definitely did it. It steps everything up a lot and really makes you think about how/where things are going to go from here.
Dinner At Rose’s
