Book Review: Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Ever wanted a book that gives you a hug and some coffee the moment you open it? That’s how I felt when I read Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree, and I loved every single moment of it. I loved how we’re on Viv’s journey from stopping on being an adventurer to being a coffee shop owner, bringing the love of coffee and treats to the river town of Thune. I loved seeing her grow and change her ways, and also find some non-violent ways of handling things, from coming to an agreement of thimblets to the Madigal and actually helping people in one little way to another.

I fell for the little rattkin Thimble is the bestest of all the boys and I would do ANYTHING for him. I can almost smell him making the cinnamon rolls or the thimblets (which is actually a real recipe). I also like Tandri and how she soothes Viv out and is always coming up with really good ideas (and she’s really talented when it comes to doing art and designing the menu). Another thing I really liked about this book is that it was so cozy and that I wanted to visit Thune and go to Legends and Lattes and get a nice cup of coffee and a treat and enjoy myself.

The only thing I didn’t like about this book, which didn’t annoy me like most fantasy novels, was the fact that Fennus appeared out of nowhere. Viv and the others was just minding their own business and Fennus would show up, waiting the Scalvert’s Stone and taunting Viv a bit. But I did like that her old crew showed up and visited her, even helped her rebuild when the original coffee shop was burned down.

The one thing I was curious about was the gnome playing cards, but then I just chalked it up to the fact that he just wanted a place to rest, have some coffee and play chess. Also have the direcat Anthy or Amity curl up next to him. I just wanted this gnome to live his best life and mind his own business. That’s it.

But I truely enjoyed this book, I would read it again so I can be enveloped with this with a warm hug and some coffee next to me.

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Book Review: Practice Makes Perfect by Sarah Adams

Practice Makes Perfect by Sarah Adams
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I normally don’t read books that comes out in a year. I normally wait for the next year to read them. But this time, on my trip coming back home, I picked up this book and I fell in love with it as soon as I opened the book and started to read it. I have never read a book this cozy before in my life, and I’m wishing that I heard more about this author, because this book was so good. Grumpy x sunshine, grumpy bodyguard teaching the sunshine flower stone owner how to date, and slowly but surely falling in love with her, and also bodyguarding her best friend while she’s planning her own wedding to the brother of the sunshine flower store owner.

I really enjoyed this book so much-I was really not expecting to enjoy this small town book and crackle at the residents in the novel. Like Mrs. Mabel and Mrs. Harriet fighting, the grocery-store scene of them putting things in their baskets, and them falling in love. I was relating so hard to Annie and how awkward she was on dates and when it came to Will, calling him every single interation of his name, she felt much better, even comfortable with him. And Will really wanted to leave Rome, until he realized that he didn’t want to.

But before he came to the revelation, Will didn’t do romance. The reason why he didn’t do romance or relationships was because of his parents. He had a pretty bad relationship with it, so that’s why he always have one night stands and little flings. But when it came to Anne Walker, he started to become her practice date, he started to fall for her. He’d get jealous whenever she even talks to a man in his vicinity, he even drinks the consent juice and asks her if it’s alright if he touches her.

And Annie was the one character I really liked in this book. She told Will not to call her ‘Angel Annie’ because she didn’t like it, she reads romance novels and tries to hide it, but at the end, she showed her best friend and sisters after finally explaining herself and what happened between her and Will, and also went on her first date after her date disaster, when the guy said that ‘she was boring’. But I really liked how brave she was when she told Will the things she wanna do, but she couldn’t because everyone put her in a box and she wants to live her life…

…and Will, whom I love to bits, tells her that “You were waiting on someone to let you be yourself.”

And that quote nearly sent me.

And the ENDING. I loved it. It almost made me cry. Now I wished someone did that for me, because it was so good. Sarah Adams became one of my new favorite romance author and I need to read the other two books because this one was really cute and really cozy as well.

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Book Review: The Shadows Between Us by Tricia Levenseller

The Shadows Between Us by Tricia Levenseller
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Okay…this book right here…brought it a month ago, had it on my kindle for the longest time and just never read it, and now that I read it, I still can’t stop thinking about it. Enemies to lovers, she fell first, the Shadow King is basically Gojo Satoru but with Shadow Magic? Bruh, I CAN’T with this book. I still love it though, but this book just took me places I didn’t even think was even possible.

My favorite characters in the book are Alessandra, Kallias, Rhoda and Hestia (I think that’s her name). I really enjoyed how Alessandra made a plan to kill Kallias once she became queen, but then, slowly but surely, she was falling in love with him without thinking about it. I think that was my favorite parts in the book-how she started to slowly fall in love with him without even thinking about it, asking him questions about his life, asking him about his shadows, just getting to know him. And when he was having problems, Alessandra came up with ways that actually helped the kingdom that I knew she was the perfect queen.

But Kallias…lemme talk about him for a minute. I thought he was just some old king who has this shadow magic that isn’t that scary. Until Alessandra went through him on that carriage ride, and the first thing I thought of once he explained how his shadow magic works was, and I wrote this down in the book: ‘He’s bloody Gojo.” Because yes, Gojo has infinity and can turn it off when he wants to, but Kallias has Shadow Magic. Homeboy can also turn it off and on if he wanted to, thus he’s fantasy Gojo…darn it.

But that little mystery of Alessandra killing her first love and making it a disappearance was kinda…stupid, in my opinion. She killed him, left him for dead, and then after a couple years later, people are hunting her down so she can confess that she did kill Hektor. When she told Kallias…all he did was laugh at her. That’s all he did-laugh. Apparently it was funny to him that she killed him so he won’t do it, and I was like…okay…cool beans, my guy…but was it that funny? Was it?? (Apparently to him, it was).

Another thing that I really liked about this book was the advice Alessandra gave to her friends. Some of them hit me while I was reading this book, and I was agreeing with her one hundred percent, even told Rhoda to go after her manservant. I really liked that about Alessandra, while she was trying to go through with her plan to kill Kallias so she can be Queen. But after the miscommunication trope rearing its ugly head again when Kallias found the poison to kill him along with finding out that his brother was still alive and parading around as Leonidas I think the name is and was trying to kill him was fun to read. But other than that, I really enjoyed this book. Might not be my favorite, but it was good nonetheless.

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Book Review: The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Oh. My. God.

This is the coziest book I’ve ever read in my life, and on top of that, I really didn’t care about the romance. All I cared about was the Nowhere House, and the people that lived in the house. I wanted to hang out with Ian, Ken, Lucie, Mika, Jamie, Altamira, Terracotta and Rosetta and stay in that house so much that I wished it was real. I really liked the everyday life that happened in the house, and I wished that they were real-that’s how much I really loved this book. The romance in the book was down on my list of things about this book that made it really good, I just loved how cozy and how I wanted to live in the Nowhere House.

But the romance in it was pretty nice and cozy as well. I really liked Mika and how she’s tutoring the girls on their magic, and how slow and sweet their romance got, even though Ian was asking so many questions and had tried multiple times to lock them up in a closet so they can kiss (me too, Ian, me too). But this is the first time I’ve ever read a grumpy x sunshine trope, and I have to say, it has been done well. But as I said, I really didn’t care about the romance at all. All I cared about was the people in the house and how they are living, thriving, and honestly minding their own business when it comes to the children and going out and having fun and learning how to control their magic.

My favorite child out of all three of them has to be Rosetta. Yes, she actually caused a little tornado in the bookstore, but she’s actually very sweet and kind and also very sure of herself when she wants to get revenge on Terracotta, who didn’t steal her puzzle from her room. I also love the fact that Rosetta can get serious when it comes to learning magic, and also comes up with really good ideas. I also like Terracotta-she kept cracking me up when she kept coming up with ways to kill Mika because she didn’t want her there, and I also liked how she defy pretty much everyone when she wanted to float in the air and ride a stick as if it was a broomstick.

The ending was the most funniest one ever-when they locked Edward in the shed because they reanimated the corpse of Lillian, and how it turns out Primrose is the sister of Lilian and that her name was Peony. But I really enjoyed this book, it’s one of my favorite ones this year, right next to From Lukov from Love.

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Book Review: Gods and Monsters by Shelby Mahurin

Gods & Monsters by Shelby Mahurin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The end of an era for me. I’ve read the first book three times, the second and this book one time, and I have to say, I’ve never had so much fun reading these books and enjoying myself getting to know these characters and making them a part of my bookish family, because I really love this series so much.

Gods and Monsters has a bunch of action, romance, drama, magic and more. It brings in the mermaids and gods of old, and it has a character I was shocked and surprised to love so much after not liking her in the last two books. But she has grown on me, and she has became one of my favorite characters, right next to Lou and Reid. Even though it opened with a possession (Cool spell, still possession), from there it lead to a journey with twists and turns that I wasn’t even expecting.

Lou and Reid, my babies, were apart, then Reid did a thing that made me have a Come to Jesus meeting with him, but he got them back. I really liked how Lou fought back against Nicholina and saw through her past and the voices inside her. I thought she was Gollum for a long time because of the way she talks. I was waiting on her to do that “gollum, gollum” thing Gollum does, but Nicholina did not-instead she talked really weird and she made me want to pull my hair out each time she does that. Then when Reid told Lou that “I will make my way back to you” and pull the string that made him lose his memories, I was confused that I wanted to read on, because I didn’t need sleep, I needed answers for what he’d done.

The introduction of the melusines was pretty darn cool. I actually wanted to live there because of how cool their world was. I liked how they had other ocean animals as pets, and how they can switch from having two legs or having fins. Their leader was alright to me, nothing to run and tell mama about, TBH. But the one thing-or person-that surprised me was Celie Tremblay..who knew how to break into stuff and actually helped Lou break into the safe at Chateau le Blanc-SHOCKINGLY.

I really didn’t like Celie in book one and two. But in this book she grew on me as she was both a lady and also a knowable thief and how she helped Lou with the door. Yes, Lou is now La Dames des Sorcieres and can do some very powerful magic, but Celie is powerful herself, even helped Belterra’s people get to safety from the blood witches.

This is my favorite book of the series, and I’m so glad that I read and loved it.

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Book Review: Blood and Honey (Serpent and Dove #2) by Shelby Mahurin

Blood & Honey by Shelby Mahurin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book…caused me so much emotional damage that I was on the edge of my seat as I read it. This has so many twists and turns and surprises that I thought that I would fall out of my seat reading this book. And Loureid once again shocked me TO THE POINT that they had to split the party, which I said “Does…does anyone know NOT TO SPLIT THE PARTY?!”

But before I can get into all of that, let’s start with the elephant in the room, which is Morgane le Blanc, Louise’s mother. In the first book, Morgane actually killed Louise but Louise came back to life. Now she’s out here killing the king’s children, starting with the blood witches. Etienne was horribly killed, and Gabrielle was kidnapped. Morgane was going after people that either looked like Reid (which, it turned out, Etienne had red hair just like Reid). Lou wanted to stop her mother from doing all of this, and she tried, but it took Woodwose, who turned out to be a very charismatic man from a traveling troupe, to stop her. But after she was stopped, she turned around and killed Ansel (which pissed me off).

Reid, on the other hand, is trying his hardest not to use magic. He doesn’t want to see it, smell it, or even think about it. After finding out he’s a male witch, he’s been trying to suppress his magic and only use his hands and fists and logic to get out of things. But he did get the Beast of Gévaudan on his side to help find Morgane and stop her. He actually made a friend in Thierry, and he did use his magic on three people and a Chasseur he knew. When he, his mother, and Bastien got caught by King Auguste, it didn’t go well. Because King Auguste wanted Louise (turns out he’s an evil son of a bitch) and didn’t care how many women he slept with, he was going to have more kids (like bruh…Robert Baratheon did that. Look how he turned out). But thanks to his sisters Violette and Violetta, he escaped and had to leave his mother behind.

Now the thing that threw me a bit was the knife-throwing scene. Did it awaken something in me? Maybe. No one told me that was going to be in there-I went in there blind and I really liked that scene. I got scared that Reid was gonna hurt Lou, but he didn’t. But the ENDING. When La Voisin did that spell so Nicholina (whom I’m convinced that was based on Drusilia from BtVS) could possess Lou, in which I was like “Is she really gonna do-no…no, she did” and I don’t know if I’m ready to read Gods and Monsters, but I am and I can’t wait to read it.

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Book Review: Electric Idol by Katee Robert

Electric Idol by Katee Robert
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Electric Idol has to be my favorite Katee Robert book for many reasons. One is that Psyche is plus-sized and I related to her so hard when it came to clothes and that she confuses feelings and sex, two, I fell in love with Eros. He’s my sweet cheese, my new good time boyyy (and the things he can do to protect her…ooooh I loved A LOT), and Aphrodite…even though she’s his mama, I really liked her, though I understood that she had to go away so a new one can take her place. But the shocking twist of Callisto as the new Hera??? Um….Ms. Katee, ma’am, I have so many questions.

This is my first time reading a book with the forced proximity trope. I knew it was in there, but I really loved the way she wrote it. It was slow, and they talked about it, going along with the marriage and actually slowing it down so Psyche could get used to Eros. The new Zeus ain’t all that scary at all, he’s just…I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it (I really can’t), but I think he’ll be just fine.

And the spice?? Oh my gosh, it was perfection. And the way Eros just asks Psyche to marry him and then she has to think about it, going through every argument? It was PRICELESS. Marriage of convenience has just become one of my new favorite tropes, and seeing how Eros and Psyche lived day through day, even though their relationship was fake but the marriage was real? The first time they call each other husband and wife? I don’t normally squeal and kick and all that while reading a romance novel, but I did for this one.

But the thing that made me squeal and kick and all that was the action. Yes, Aphrodite wanted Psyche dead. Yes, Eros was supposed to kill her. When she found out they got married, what does Aphrodite do? Tries so hard to finish off her son’s job, blaming it on him so that he can come back to her (*que Mother Gothel’s song “Don’t be a dummy, come with mummy. Mother…”*) and it doesn’t work? And Psyche, thank god for being the smartest woman IN THE WHOLE WORLD, just tricked her and now Aphrodite went bye bye and now Olympus is safe…for now…we think…no, no, we hope.

Also yes I also did squeal seeing Persephone and Hades there in the book as well, and the epilogue of them at Demeter’s house for dinner was so cozy and CUTE. Loved every bit of it.

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