Skip to main content

Legends & Lattes is a Critical Hit

For reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, I dislike Guy Fawkes Night, the UK's answer to the 4th of July. We celebrate our opression with bonfires, fireworks and funfairs. I personally sit indoors crying and working through my own opressive grief. 

So what I'm trying to say is that I REALLY needed cheering up.

Legends & Lattes (Travis Baldree) is one of those books that sounds too good to be true. 'Low-stakes' is often code for 'lack of plot' and 'queer romance'... well... we've been hurt before. To my great surprise, all the other excited reviewers were right. Legends & Lattes is fantastic. 

We follow Viv, an Orc with a dream. A dream of putting down the sword and putting on a barista apron. She wants to open a coffee shop in a city that hasn't heard of coffee. Of course, she can't do it alone, and so she gathers a ragtag group of misfits along the way.

They progress from coffee to lattes, from lattes to pastries, and even (gasp!) introduce iced drinks. Every menu update is as thrilling as levelling up in a game, and the threats they face are solved with the power of friendship. The romance is subtle at first but sweetens up right along with Mr. Thimble's cooked delicacies. 

In my opinion, this is a book that you should keep behind glass, with a 'break in case of emergencies' sign. Break it open whenever your own personal Guy-Fawkes-Night-of-the-Soul rolls around.  

Where did I hear about this book? Cosy Fantasy Reddit

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Decagon House Murders: And Then There Were None, Redone

" If only I could experience that for the first time again ." It's one of the most human emotions in the world, one we feel about everything from Star Wars to seeing the ocean. Some experiences can never be re-lived and some might only be re-experienced with new perspective and older eyes.    But The Decagon House Murders (by Yukito Ayatsuji, translated by Ho-Ling Wong) is that rarest of things - one that allows you to re-experience a classic all over again. It's a Japanese mystery novel, published in 1987 and released for English audiences in 2020. It became a cult classic in Japan, reinvigorating the literary appetite for puzzle-based mysteries.   The book revolves around members of a mystery book club at a Japanese university. They are fans of the 'golden age of detective novels', discussing the books, writing stories of their own, and going on trips together. Luckily for Western readers, and for readers who struggle with large casts, they only refer to e...

Carrie Soto is Back

Here I am reviewing a sports novel... who'd have thought it?  I have a soft spot for the extremely-hyped Taylor Jenkins Reid. I read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo because a colleague (clearly tuned in to my queerness) gave me the copy they'd just finished with a knowing ' this seems up your street '. And whilst I was dubious (novels about celebrity are not my thing) they were proven correct. I loved it.  Likewise I enjoyed Daisy Jones and the Six which, though not as good, was a fun evening's audiobook listen. I decided to put Taylor Jenkins Reid in the category of an author I wouldn't go out of my way for, but would probably read if a book came my way via the library, or a sale.  Which is how Carrie Soto is Back arrived in my lap. I snagged it for 99p and then ignored it for over a year, because... a tennis novel? Really?!  Believe it or not, I have form with tennis romances, with a friend of mine having written a particularly popular one. This was my j...

Short Story Spring

One of the absolute joys in life is finding appreciation for something you didn't previously 'get'. For me, short story collections are that thing.  Whilst I have no issues reading short stories in general, collections and anthologies used to defeat me. I found them more exhausting than novels, much in the same way tapas can be more filling than a large meal. But after trialling a method of reading multiple collections and once, hopping between them as the mood struck, I have become an anthology devotee.  And so we come onto my Spring challenge. I actually intended to post this at the start of April, and keep it updated as I went, but life took a bit of a turn and so I chose to read the books and round them up later.  I had expected the books I chose to take the majority of the month, but a combination of three short page lengths and four very easy reads meant I was done in less than two weeks. See what I read below... The Collections The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by ...