Welcome to Frequently Read Fridays, a new book-reviewing series I’m starting! The idea of Frequently Read Fridays is to review a book that’s been trendy or popular at any point in time. This will allow me to cover a wide range of books across different genres. As the first of this new series, I’ll review Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree, even if I am a little bit late to the part on this one.
This was a book I had no doubt I wanted to read based on the premise. Legends & Lattes is a ‘high fantasy, low stakes’ novel about an orc named Viv who leaves behind a life of battle to open a coffee shop in a city called Thune. The challenge? No one there has heard of coffee, elements of her previous life threaten her new one, and she needs help getting started. It’s a story of found family and fresh starts and sits in the popular ‘cosy fantasy’ genre.
“After twenty-two years of adventuring, Viv had reached her limit of blood and mud and bullshit. An orc’s life was strength and violence and sudden, sharp end—but she’d be damned if she let hers finish that way. It was time for something new.”
Travis Baldree, Legends & Lattes
Delving into this book, I was excited by the idea of Viv forging her way to a new life to sell coffee of all things. It’s a compelling idea that would probably appeal to many. Then I was invested in Viv’s hard-working attitude, and the friends she made as she bravely journeyed into an unfamiliar life. The supporting characters gave this book so much life, welcoming and supporting Viv and her goals as she opened her coffee shop, bringing their unique light to the book and opening up as much as Viv did as she started to find success.
It lived up to the cosy promises and then some, while also retaining some stakes, which helped drive the plot forward and cemented the community Viv had found in Thune.
Despite my initial excitement, however, I struggled to rate this book because as I mentioned, the sentiment, the characters, and the premise were all excellent. Still, something was missing, and I struggled to put my finger on it right up until the book was ending, thanks to the changing structure. I had noticed that I was reaching for it less and less as I got further along in the book, constantly feeling somewhat unsatisfied.
Then I realised what was wrong. It felt too long. This for me was confirmed by the shorter, snappier scenes that made up a large portion of the book towards the end. Not only were so many of these scenes kept incredibly short, but I realised then that it had been the case for many of the scenes earlier in the book and the shorter the scene, the more unnecessary it felt.
The main issue is probably that this book wasn’t paced very well, or more accurately wasn’t paced in a way that kept my attention. Yes, it was cosy, and yes it had all the right pieces, but it fell a little flat for me.
This is not to say that it wasn’t an enjoyable read. I would recommend it to fans of cosy fantasy, or people who enjoy low stakes plots with a slower pace. The book reads like a diary more than a novel, with various episodic accounts of events in the coffee shop, so if that also sounds like something you’d enjoy, I think Legends & Lattes might be your thing.
I gave the book a rating of three out of five stars, a neutral pick that balances the fact that there were probably an equal number of things I did and didn’t like.
If you’ve read Legends & Lattes, what did you think of it?
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