This one was touted as a sweet, pleasant, cozy, good-hearted read, and that sounded like exactly what I was in the mood for right now, but... Well, I'm afraid for me it missed "cozy" entirely and landed straight on "irredeemably bland."

Which is too bad. The premise sounds like a lot of fun. In a D&D-style setting, Orcish adventurer Viv has decided to hang up her sword and pursue her dream of opening a coffee shop, even though pretty much no one around her has even heard of this exotic gnomish stuff called coffee. And the way she sets about basically creating a 21st-century coffee shop in this fantasy world did, briefly, seem kind of cute. Oh, look, now they've invented biscotti, ha! Except... Well, you know how, these days, coffee shops all over the place have started to feel completely interchangeable? And, yeah, there's a comfortable familiarity to that, but maybe a bit of local color might actually be more interesting? This is basically that in novel form. No local color, no sense of the fantasy setting as a real place that matters in any way. Just your average boring completely familiar coffee shop with some vague fantasy flavor. For those familiar with fanfictional tropes, it's basically a coffeeshop AU without the AU part, and... Well, maybe before picking this one up I should have thought about how much I dislike coffeeshop AUs and the way they suck out all the specific details of settings and stories that make them interesting to me and replace them with the boringly mundane.

Mind you, it could have worked, anyway, if it were played with the right kind of humor, or if the characters were compelling enough to carry the whole thing by themselves, but no and no. And the oh-so-pat "and then everything works out fine because of the Power of Friendship!" ending was far too cartoonish for me.

Then again, maybe the simple truth is that I'm entirely too Gen X to really enjoy anything that's praised on the back cover for being "wholesome." ( )

Light and enjoyable. Now I want a coffee and a chocolate croissant. ( )

Sweet. Warm and Fuzzy. Good for bath time. ( )

This is a very cozy book with the lore and legend of series like The Witcher but without the battles and bloodshed. It’s an easy read that made me smile a lot. I just want to scoop Thimble up and carry him everywhere with me! ( )

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree. The story follows the life of Viv, a former sword-slinging Orc who has decided to trade in the battlefield for a retirement as a coffeeshop owner, and all of the new characters she meets along the way. This book is the definition of cozy and heart warming. It was a delightful read to escape to while still providing meaningful conflict and satisfying resolutions. Highly recommend for any fantasy lover who wants a quick and light-hearted read. 5/5 stars. ( )