Legends & Lattes

Reread, Aug 2022- The audio is fantastic as well! Baldree doesn't ever disappoint in narration.


This self-pub low stakes fantasy novel by Travis Baldree has been making the rounds and in between all the large chunky books I've been reading, I decided to dip into it. It's incredibly smooth to read and I found myself halfway through in no time, so I decided to binge it pretty quickly.

So what did I think?

I think it deserves its hype! Legends and Lattes follows an Orc mercenary who decides she's done with killing and retires from the Merc life to start a coffee shop in a nearby city. Only, nobody has ever heard of coffee. Viv has to learn how to run a business with a product nobody knows they want, while dealing with the fallout of her decision to retire and trying to navigate new relationships with the people she recruits to help her run her shop.

Fantasy has a tendency to get bigger and bigger and more epic and introduce more factions and more POVs and sometimes you just want a nice story about found family and new beginnings. I appreciated that this book didn't turn the cheese factor up to 11 like some books in this subgenre (looking at you, Cerulean Sea). It's a bit more subtle in how wholesome and fun it is. Also, it's gonna make you hungry. I really wanted -nah, still want- a cinnamon bun while reading this book. The end of this book manages to be emotionally affecting without feeling manipulative, and at the end I definitely wanted more with these characters.

If you're looking for a light, fun read with low-stakes and compelling characters, give Legends and Lattes a try. Baldree is a first time author, but one of my favorite audiobook narrators, and I'm excited to see what he does next.

9.5/10