The Chocolate Ship

Rating:
Summary: Big Hype, Big Let Down
Review: The Chocolate Ship is a story about the inaugural voyage of a Black-owned cruise ship. Passengers on the ship include Mia and her boyfriend of three years, Miles. Miles has a fear of commitment, and Mia has hopes that a cruise aboard a luxury liner will cement her relationship with him. Mia
and Miles set sail with Mia's friend, single mom, Bianca, her son Corey, and Bianca's friends, twins Yanni and Lexi, and Megan. Miles' friend Steve and his wife Kelly also are along for the ride.

The point of the story is love and hijinx on the high seas. However, the book gets bogged down with too many details about the ship as well as unnecessary details about every single piece of clothing the passengers wear. This detail makes the book boring and hard to get through. Combine
this with lackluster sex scenes and you have the makings of a mediocre book that I had a hard time finishing.

I can understand that the author felt obliged to go through such detail about the ship in order to drive home the point that this Black owned ship is the top of the line. However, I don't understand why this author felt
it was necessary to give readers a detailed inventory of what the characters wore, from the cloth Chanel bag to the brown raisin strappy sandals. Unfortunately such attention to detail in both the ship and the
clothing hindered the author's attempt to get an already unoriginal story line moving.

In addition to too much detail, this book is also the victim of an over saturation of sex in African-American fiction. There is so much sex in our books nowadays that you almost become numb to it. If an author is going to
rely on sex to sell a book, the sex better be off the chain or extremely romantic, and in the case of the Chocolate Ship, it was neither.

Needless to say, all of the main characters couple up and/or re-couple throughout the course of the cruise. There is infidelity, and backstabbing, as well as realizations, arguments and reconciliations. The

overriding theme throughout the book was whether Mia and Miles will marry. The better question was why they would want to. They seemed ill suited to one another, and no chemistry between them erupted from the pages. It was
hard to care about what happened to them or to the other passengers on the ship.

Overall, the plot was thin and uninteresting; even the comedian's monologue which set out at length was corny. The characters were underdeveloped, and the writing style was problematic; it felt forced, unnatural and did not
flow. The Chocolate Ship is billed as a "sizzling, sexy, fabulous, funny and wonderfully romantic adventure". Unfortunately, it was anything but.

Reviewed by: misrich

Rating:
Summary: Lack of Character Development
Review: The premise of this book sounded great but because there was a lack of character development it was hard to understand what motiviated some of the characters. The author went overboard in her description of every single detail of the cruise and the settings instead of focusing more on the characters. There was also an overabundance of primary characters making it hard to keep track of who was who. I thought the book was okay, but would have a hard time recommending it to others.

Rating:
Summary: Passion, drama, comedy, more!
Review: This book is a great source of entertainment about a group of singles and couples from the Los Angeles area that embark on a vacation of a lifetime aboard a black owned cruise liner called The Chocolate Ship. This book took me on an enchanting ride that shocked me at times, made me laugh, want to book a cruise, and wish I was the one on the other end of that romance scene! This book entails "call your girls up drama", comedy, heart-touching poetry, and a lovely surprise ending. Marissa Monteilh provides a stimulating journey of fun, daring and exciting twists. Take this journey for yourself. You'll love...The Chocolate Ship-

Rating:
Summary: Okay read
Review: This book sounded very interesting with the whole first black cruise ship idea. There were too many characters and too much sex that had nothing to do with the plot. I thought the characters should have been more developed and some should not have been included as main characters at all. The style the book was written in was quite confusing and I would not recommend this book for a good read.

Rating:
Summary: Fun Ride!
Review: This book was a hoot, from the fight scene to the sex scenes (everywhere) on the ship. Good idea. Where's Part 2? I'm going to get my ticket to cruise so I can have a ride of my own.

Rating:
Summary: This is the best kind of chocolate: Non fattening!
Review: You will laugh and get mad and even be a bit surprized ay the outcome of this story. May/December Souls was a lovely start for this author and CS is even better! This story screams for a slot on primetime! Look out Soulfood! Here comes the Chocolate Ship! I really enjoyed this story! Now I want to take a cruise...