I love candy. My current favorites are probably Almond Joy and Twix. In the past, it’s been Green&Black’s Mint, Toblerone, Butterfingers, Starburst (original candy and jelly bean), spice drops, Rolos—too many to list, really. So you can imagine that when my wife got this book for Christmas, I wanted to read it.

And Candyfreak starts out great! It’s funny, it’s snarky, it’s just enough personal detail that you start to like the author (with the perfectly appropriate last name of Almond!). Mr. Almond describes his childhood, how he eats particular types of candy (he strips the hard shell off M&M’s before sucking down the chocolate; we all have our own methods), and his quest to find the candy of his childhood.

It’s this quest that forms the central theme of the book. Here’s someone who fondly remembers very specific candy bars, but they’re not made any more. And why not? Mostly because the bigger companies (Mars, Hershey, etc.) have bought out or forced out the smaller, regional candy companies that made those quirky products. These bigger companies are beholden to the dollar—if a candy doesn’t sell well or even test well, it gets pulled. So Mr. Almond decides that he’s going to tour four regional candy makers and sample their flagship product.

As he tours, he details the state of the industry (unfortunately monopolistic), and spends a good amount of time describing those weird, regional-only candy bars and how they’re made. But he also becomes rather maudlin. The book veers away from its great opening as Mr. Almond worries about testicular cancer, wonders if he’s ever going to get married, and cries about how candy literally saved his life. It was a disturbing and odd break from the rest of the book, with just too much personal detail. Mr. Almond hadn’t wrote so well that I cared and wanted to know that stuff.

Is that harsh? Probably. But man, I was just here for the candy.

PS: I had an opportunity to sample one of those regional candy bars Mr. Almond loves. The Lake Champlain Five Star Chocolate Bar just wasn’t very good. Like the Candy Addict, I didn’t think very much of it. Unlike the Candy Addict, Steve Almond is still not my hero.