Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree (audio)

Posted on February 20, 2026 by pagesofjulia

I somehow got this book recommended, I think as a comp for The Spellshop which I loved. It was a good rec! Legends and Lattes is likewise cozy, although not without threat and even violence; offers subtle romance; and incorporates fantasy and worldbuilding elements. It was on the short side, and I got so engrossed I finished it in just two days! (I’m currently engaged in the included short story, a prequel, and will write that one up for you soon.)

This novel features Viv, an orc who has worked as a mercenary – hunting bounties, killing bad guys and monsters – with a small group of associates (who are mostly also friends). She’s been dreaming of getting out of the game, though. Her back hurts. As the story opens, we see her grasp a mysterious item, a bit of a good luck charm. She journeys along ley lines to the town she’s chosen for its advantageous position. Between her luck object, the ley lines, a witching rod, and a nest egg she’s saved up, she methodically sets about establishing the first coffee shop in the town of Thune. In an interesting retail challenge, no one in Thune has ever heard of coffee; Viv herself had only encountered it in a distant gnomic city. Not only is she embarking on her first retail venture, she’s introducing an unheard-of product. Bean water?, her first few acquaintances ask her, clearly doubtful. But she has her good luck charm.

The truly cozy aspect of this story lies in Viv’s earnest desire to leave behind a life by-the-sword in favor of a more wholesome one – ‘cozy’ is in fact the word. The gnomic coffee shop she’d fallen in love with was warm, bustling, with a sense of community, as well as delicious drinks. In Thune, she slowly builds her own version of this, making friends (almost by accident and almost without noticing it) along the way. First she hires a builder, an expert craftsman but one disregarded by his local society, making him ready to appreciate Viv’s valuing his services. Next she hires an assistant, also a bit of a social outcast, but who turns out to be PR/marketing whiz (and an artist, who enlivens the chalkboard menu and signboards). Then she stumbles almost by accident on a baker, a tiny ‘ratkin’ of few words but a genius with dough and flavor. A painfully shy giant comes in to play the lute. An awkward scholar comes to study and eventually share his skills. Viv wanted a new life and livelihood; she winds up establishing a community, even a built family. And good thing, because the troubles of her old life are just around the corner.

Sweet, entertaining, page-turning. Can’t wait for more.

Rating: 7 Thimblets.

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The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst (audio)

Posted on February 2, 2026 by pagesofjulia

What a sweet, charming fantasy/romance story about librarians, sentient plants, and the challenges of stepping outside one’s comfort zone. I’m a new fan of Sarah Beth Durst.

We meet Kiela just before she discovers that the library is burning. She’s been sort of lackadaisically sorting books into crates for rescue, not really believing that the rebels would really burn the library – books are sacred! But we quickly escalate through smoke into evacuation: Kiela, eight or so crates of precious spellbooks, and her assistant and best (and only) friend, a sentient spider plant named Caz, load up in a small sailboat and pole out into the imperial city’s canal network and then into the sea. As the city burns, they sail for a place Kiela’s not seen nor thought much about in many years: the island of Caltrey, where she was born and where she lived until her late parents moved the family to the city when she was nine. Kiela and Caz move back into the family’s cottage – not too badly decayed – and immediately face a shortage of both food and funds. They also face a neighbor named Larran, who is handsome, kind, and too friendly for Kiela’s tastes: “We prefer neighborly,” he responds when accused, “but ‘nosy’ is probably just as accurate.” To be clear, Kiela is a total recluse: for years, since her parents died, she’s lived in a corner of the imperial library where she also worked, ordering and receiving her meals without human contact. It’s been an embarrassingly long time since she even talked to another person. And now she is challenged to deal with the inhabitants of Caltrey. Larran is helpful, but Kiela has trouble appreciating this quality, at least at first.

Indeed, at first Kiela feels a little off-putting. Her attitude toward a new acquaintance who’s trying to help is a bit harsher than felt warranted, and I found it strange how unprepared she was to do the simplest things for herself: not knowing how to forage for food or start a fire is one thing, but as an extremely well-read librarian, how has she not at least encountered the concept of survival skills, as in, enough to appreciate how little she knows? But she picks things up quickly. First, she realizes that the island is not quite as idyllic as remembered. The plants and trees are sickly, the springs drying up, the storms worsening, and the merhorses unable to reproduce. (Merhorses are essential to the island’s fisheries, and Larran’s special love: he is a merhorse herder.) Bravely, and not quite legally, she decides to use the knowledge she’s brought to the island. She opens the spellbooks she saved from fire and tries to help. Because remember, this is a magical world: Kiela’s skin and hair are both (naturally) blue. One of her new friends in town has antlers, and another the hindquarters of a horse. The island’s natural rhythms have been thrown off by an imbalance of magic, which is a political issue: the empire’s capitol keeping powers for itself and ceasing to care for its outlying islands like Caltrey. And then there’s Caz, a wonderful character, a wonderful researcher, Kiela’s devoted friend, and possessed of profound anxiety.

Even as I’m writing this review I’m realizing how many facets of this book I found intriguing. I loved the cozy community of Caltrey, both in its flora and fauna and cottages and bakery, and in its community-mindedness – imperfect, as ever we are, but still cozy. I loved the well-built fantasy element, the merhorses and winged cats and purple-swirling storm sky and Caz the spider plant, et al. I did appreciate Kiela’s character, however prickly and hapless she was up front; she has a background of both suffering and neurosis to explain her personality, and best of all, she experiences a real arc of change and growth throughout the book (while retaining, believably, some of her quirks). I loved Larran, and found their trajectory snuggly and loveable, if not complexly plotted. There was a political thread to the story, one that mostly passes Kiela by, at least in her former life: the empire’s power, helping only its urban and upper-class citizenry, what it allows the outer islands to suffer. Even the misapplication of magic that’s led to ever worsening storms is a thinly-clad metaphor for anthropogenic climate change. The politics are not front and center to this story, but I appreciate the sense that Kiela lives in a realistically complicated world, whether she chooses to engage with those parts of it or not – and, realistically, she finds that those elements touch her life and the lives of those she loves, regardless.

This was a really fun, absorbing adventure. I was sad when it ended, and I can’t wait to get my hands on the next related story. For the audio production, I thought narrator Caitlin Davies did a fine job acting and enunciating. I’m all in.

Rating: 8 cinnamon rolls.

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Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto

Posted on July 10, 2023 by pagesofjulia

This is a very cute, sweet, pleasurable story: a cozy mystery, a loving family tale, with rom-com style matchups and a loveable amateur sleuth. Vera Wong is an older lady – in the world of this novel, she’s just sixty but also an ‘old lady,’ all things being relative, I guess. (Despite Vera’s starring role, the rest of the perspectives are decidedly youthful.) She’s widowed, and she misses her beloved husband, but it is in her personality (and, implied, part of her ‘Chinese mother’ culture) to soldier on. She has a small business she’s very proud of: Vera Wang’s World-Famous Teahouse, in San Francisco’s Chinatown. (Yes, she’s taking advantage of the more famous Vera Wang’s name recognition.) She lives upstairs, and wakes every morning precisely at four-thirty to start her day with a brisk walk and a text to her adult son, Tilly, who receives a number of these texts every daily, exhorting him to proper behaviors; he rarely responds. The voice of Vera’s chapters (in close third person) is resolute and cheerfully bossy; but we understand that she is very lonely. Despite its name, her teahouse is far from famous. She knows it will soon have to be shut down.

Then something terribly exciting happens: she comes downstairs one morning to find a dead body in the teahouse. Vera is thrilled! She calls the police, but they do not seem nearly as worked up about the possible murder as they should be, and they are not at all appreciative that she has helpfully outlined the body for them in Sharpie. “Vera knows they won’t do anything… but… nobody sniffs out wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands, and what does Vera have but time?” And so the nosy, overbearing, but somehow magnetic Vera is on the case. If there is a case – the dead man, Marshall Chen, is originally ruled an accidental death. But Vera won’t let this stop her.

Soon other characters (suspects!) surface: there is Julia, Marshall’s widow, worn into submissive passivity by his years of verbal abuse, and her sweet toddler daughter, Emma. There’s Oliver, Marshall’s twin (who gives everyone a start when he first shows up on scene), long estranged from his bully of a brother. And then there are Sana and Riki, both of whom pose as reporters but who are each hiding a secret connection to the dead (murdered?) man. In her usual domineering manner, Vera takes each of these younger people under her wing, even charming the somewhat troubled Emma into calling her Grandma. It helps that Vera never stops cooking up wild, wonderful feasts of traditional Chinese food anytime they gather. Even as she’s befriending them and improving their lives (with a little insistent advice, not to say pushing), Vera is investigating each of the foursome as murder suspects. But as they come together to form an unusual little family of their own, she is less and less pleased at the thought of turning one of them into the police (incompetents!), especially as it is increasingly obvious that the late Marshall was not a nice man at all.

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers trades rather heavily on stereotypes about Chinese mothers, to an extent that I think would be problematic if the author did not herself come from that culture. She pokes fun in a loving manner. Does her in-group status excuse using stereotypes as the punchline? I don’t consider myself qualified to make a firm call on this, especially as I am not in-group; I’m cautiously okay with this case, but mine is not perhaps the final judgment that matters most. I will say the book is intended in good fun and comes off as such. Jesse Sutanto has published an impressive number of adult, young adult, and middle grade novels, and the writing style of this one leans toward the cute rather than the literary. Some constructions feel quickly slapped off. It’s fine for an easy, entertaining read, and this one hits the mark.

Rating: 7 bowls of congee.

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Shady Hollow by Juneau Black

Posted on March 14, 2022 by pagesofjulia

This whimsical cozy mystery set in a town of animal characters will tickle and amuse alongside its whodunit plot.

Previously published in 2015 by Hammer & Birch, Shady Hollow is the first in a series of cozy mysteries starring sweet, lovable animal characters. Juneau Black (pen name of a two-author team) will please lovers of both woodland creatures and whodunits with this gentle, plot-twisting exploration of small-town life.

The community of Shady Hollow is home to a typical cast of amiable eccentrics, including a gossip-hungry hummingbird; a good-natured, coffee-slinging moose; a timid mouse accountant; and a family of upper-crusty beavers. When a cantankerous toad turns up dead in the mill pond, however, the town’s policebears turn out to be underprepared to investigate, and it falls to local reporter Vera Vixen to uncover the murderer. Vera the fox is “an old-school journalist, despite her youth,” and though new to town, her friendship with Lenore Lee (a wise raven well-read in murder and, naturally, owner of Nevermore Books) provides a solid base for her inquiries. The more she learns about the inhabitants of Shady Hollow, however, the more complicated the case becomes, and Vera herself may be in danger.

With its charming and affable characters, Shady Hollow nonetheless serves up plenty of intrigue and danger, ending with teasing hints of what’s to come in the next installment (Cold Clay is slated for March 2022). The nonhuman cast offers an extra note of humor: accused of cynicism, Lenore responds, “I’m a raven…. If you want sunshine and melodies, go find a swallow.” This captivating tale offers sunshine and murder in perfect proportion to keep readers entertained and engrossed in deceptively placid Shady Hollow.

This review originally ran in the January 28, 2022 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive five issues per week of book reviews and other bookish news.

Rating: 7 cups of coffee.

Come back Friday for my interview with Juneau Black!

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Dark Night by Paige Shelton

Posted on November 22, 2021 by pagesofjulia

Piles of intrigue and secrets populate a remote town in Alaska, where an amateur sleuth hopes to reinvent herself, in book three of this cozy mystery series.

Dark Night, book three in Paige Shelton’s Alaska Wild series, continues the adventures of thriller writer Beth Rivers in the insular small town of Benedict, Alaska. Like Thin Ice and Cold Wind, this installment offers intrigue in a low-gore, cozy package.

Beth is known to the rest of the world under her pseudonym, Elizabeth Fairchild, but after an abduction and skin-of-the-teeth escape, she’s retreated to this remote hamlet to live quietly and anonymously: only the local police chief knows who she really is. With winter closing in and a few friends kept at arm’s distance, Beth tries to heal from the trauma and go on with her writing, hoping to hear that her abductor will eventually be caught. Instead, her mother turns up unexpectedly. Mill Rivers is a loose cannon, on the run from the law herself–and she may be Beth’s best hope at finding peace and finally feeling safe again. A local murder, of course, spices things up. Between Beth’s reluctant romantic interest in the comically named Tex Southern, the propensity of Benedict’s residents to keep their secrets, an ill-mannered, unwanted census taker and yet another fugitive in town, mother and daughter will have their hands full solving mysteries large and small.

Beth’s relationship with local law enforcement (and Benedict’s unconventional boundaries in this regard) allow her to act as an unofficial investigator. Mill is a force to be reckoned with in every way: another amateur detective, but with a violent streak, she still seeks her husband (Beth’s father), who has been missing for decades. The librarian is a special-ops dark horse, and the local dog sledder and tow truck driver may have a checkered history of his own. Beth is a by-choice tenant at a halfway house for female felons; the list of eccentrics lengthens from here. Benedict is the town where people go to keep their secrets, but Beth may have to open up if she’s going to learn the truth of her own past.

Shelton’s plot is twistier than a path through the dark Alaska woods. Her characters may be bumbling, but they are generally well-meaning, except when they are revealed as decidedly otherwise. Suspicions shift and suspense builds in this novel of discovery, growth, relationship building and investigatory hijinks. As a bonus, Dark Night ends with a lead-in to the next episode: Beth Rivers’s trajectory will surely extend and continue to complicate as she deepens her roots in the captivating town of Benedict.

This review originally ran in the October 25, 2021 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 6 cheese-foraging adventures.

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