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A review by sarahdm
Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree
2.0
I really wanted to love this book.
The premise was so nice. Its what D&D players dream about for their characters post-campaign. A nice cozy retirement serving coffee, eating pastries, and finding love. It literally sounds like a perfect little slice of life.
But about the first 70% of the book is just so boring and frustrating. I understand that we have to be introduced to all these characters so that the ending we got makes sense and is as emotional/heartwarming as it was. But I just couldn’t latch onto any of these characters. All of the little B-plots and character moments are cute but thats really it. Nothing really happens for SO LONG. And the things that do happen (the whole paying someone off with cinnamon rolls bit) are just so frustrating to read. There is so little character work in that first 3 quarters of the book. I get that the whole point of cozy fantasy is that nothing really happens but this is just TOO COZY. Low stakes? More like no stakes.
And then we hit a point of the story where the plot really starts to get interesting. The writing quality suddenly spikes and it starts to actual feel like a real book. We get the cute found family heart warming ending which I really did like. It was nice. But it took so long for it to be nice. Too long. I wanted to DNF this book so many times, I only powered through it because my friends love this book.
Also, it was advertised to me as a queer romance. I kept reading WAITING for some kind of exploration of emotion or feelings. But all we got was vague stuff that could just be chalked up to awkward friendship or co-workers just chatting. And, not until the LAST QUARTER of the book did the romance actually start really developing (it should have been building THROUGH THE WHOLE BOOK).
When I finally reached the end of the book I was honestly relieved. I didn’t even bother reading the bonus story in the back. I just wanted to be done with this.
I have no idea why I didn’t like this. I LOVE slice of life fantasy anime where nothing is also happening. This book has such good ideas. Then I saw that it was a NaNoWriMo book and it suddenly all seemed to make sense.
This book needs a few more drafts, maybe some fat trimmed off, and just a little more time to bake. I might even pick up the author’s next book just to see if its a better read with a proper editor and time management this time around.
The premise was so nice. Its what D&D players dream about for their characters post-campaign. A nice cozy retirement serving coffee, eating pastries, and finding love. It literally sounds like a perfect little slice of life.
But about the first 70% of the book is just so boring and frustrating. I understand that we have to be introduced to all these characters so that the ending we got makes sense and is as emotional/heartwarming as it was. But I just couldn’t latch onto any of these characters. All of the little B-plots and character moments are cute but thats really it. Nothing really happens for SO LONG. And the things that do happen (the whole paying someone off with cinnamon rolls bit) are just so frustrating to read. There is so little character work in that first 3 quarters of the book. I get that the whole point of cozy fantasy is that nothing really happens but this is just TOO COZY. Low stakes? More like no stakes.
And then we hit a point of the story where the plot really starts to get interesting. The writing quality suddenly spikes and it starts to actual feel like a real book. We get the cute found family heart warming ending which I really did like. It was nice. But it took so long for it to be nice. Too long. I wanted to DNF this book so many times, I only powered through it because my friends love this book.
Also, it was advertised to me as a queer romance. I kept reading WAITING for some kind of exploration of emotion or feelings. But all we got was vague stuff that could just be chalked up to awkward friendship or co-workers just chatting. And, not until the LAST QUARTER of the book did the romance actually start really developing (it should have been building THROUGH THE WHOLE BOOK).
When I finally reached the end of the book I was honestly relieved. I didn’t even bother reading the bonus story in the back. I just wanted to be done with this.
I have no idea why I didn’t like this. I LOVE slice of life fantasy anime where nothing is also happening. This book has such good ideas. Then I saw that it was a NaNoWriMo book and it suddenly all seemed to make sense.
This book needs a few more drafts, maybe some fat trimmed off, and just a little more time to bake. I might even pick up the author’s next book just to see if its a better read with a proper editor and time management this time around.