I haven't read a really good fantasy in a while but I loved reading about Miyara and her journey on becoming a tea master. Formally a princess Miyara decides not to continue on with the family traditions of dedicating their lives to service she decides to leave, Which in turn basically means she will be disowned by the royal family. Miyara leaves the capital and finds herself in Sayorsen.

Here she meets Lorwyn, an undocumented witch living in hiding who also works for a tea shop. She takes Miyara in and from there the journey truly begins. I adored all of the supporting characters and watching Miyara grow to be more and more confident in herself. I can't wait to move on to the next book in the series.

Cozy fantasy is on the rise and this book is a lovely addition to the genre. The story is told with the perfect blend of romance, magic, and care. If you are looking for a book that is a warm cup of tea on a cold winter evening, you have found it here

A Coup of Tea is a cozy fantasy (potentially my new favorite genre!) about a princess renouncing her title and choosing to live a different life. Miyara has training in tea and meets some new people who agree to give her a job in a tea shop. There, she embarks on becoming a tea master to be able to use her skills and serve her people. I have been reading more fantasy recently and thought that this book looked fun! I was unfamiliar with its history as a web series and am excited that there are already sequels available!

I really enjoyed this book! I loved the unique setting, the characters, and the world building. It's definitely not without conflict and danger, despite being cozy, but the characters were so lovely it really helped keep my interest throughout the book. I thought that this book struck a good balance of show not tell in showing history and the rules of the society. I really liked that Miyara was a quieter character who grew over the course of the novel. Her romance was adorable and her friends were memorable and good additions to the story. I liked the depiction of social issues and different identities in this book and can't wait to read more!

Overall, this book is a lovely fantasy that I would recommend to anyone who wants a good magical story. I will definitely be reading the sequels! 4.20 stars from me. Thank you to Casey Blair and NetGalley for the electronic advanced reader's copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!

This is one of the best books I’ve read so far this year. I loved following Miyara as she struggles with her path in life (super relatable!) and I enjoyed seeing her grow as a person outside of her “fourth princess” title. I loved all the main characters, and I also liked the sweet romance that was threaded throughout the book - it didn’t take over the main story but was a nice additional enhancement.

I thought the story was well paced, and the world building was good - I felt I was shown through Miyara’s eyes how it all worked which meant I didn’t feel pulled out of the narrative. I liked the action, I thought the inclusion of the issues surrounding social justice were thought provoking, and of course who doesn’t love a happily ever after? And also…tea!

If you love your fantasy books cozy with a HEA, then this is absolutely for you. If you like cozy, clean romance, secret princesses, or HEA then definitely give this a try. If you liked A Magic Steeped In Poison then read this one - they have similar vibes.

I received a free copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was a fun read- rather similar to older ya stories that I loved previously, with a more obvious social justice bent. I’m glad there wasn’t an overly large amount of romance, and liked the heart of the story, but with a little more polish I think this would have been even better.

Very enjoyable cozy fantasy.

I am so glad I’ve become aware of this sub-genre of cozy fantasy. I had never heard of it before and once I realized it existed it helped to make so much of my recent reading preferences make more sense. I loved this book because it is fairly low stakes, has some really likeable characters and feature people coming together as a kind of found family. It is pretty heartwarming fare and is perfect for lying in bed and the end of a long day and drifting off to sleep with a good story. Oh wait, not that it is dull and makes me fall asleep … oh you know what I mean. It’s something I can relax with.

This book features a good heroine. She is aware that she doesn’t really fit into the classic princess roles that are available to her, so she makes the IMO very brave choice to throw it all away and go live on her own terms. Absolutely frightening prospect to be clear. I immediately thought, this girl has absolutely no clue how to go about this, which becomes immediately clear. Thankfully, she finds her footing fairly quickly, and is able to lean on the skills she learned as a royal to make her way.

I feel like any good cozy fantasy book needs a strong food aspect to make it truly cozy. This one is very tea focused which is nice. I love the descriptions of the tea services and accoutrements.

This was an enjoyable read and I am adding volume 2 to my TBR.

Miyara is not a princess anymore. She chooses to leave. To not be found, she needs to hide. She ends up working in a tea shop in a town where the secrets are bigger than they seem. These secrets threaten the people that help her, will she find a way to help them? How powerful is a cup of tea? Is she going to have to renounce her new freedom?

WOW, this book is way more than a cup of tea! You start thinking it's just the story of a runaway princess who needs to learn how to survive in the real world hidden from her family, but it’s only the surface of the book. You find a conspiracy, magic, injustice towards a nation that wants the same privilege as everyone, and a cute little love story.

I'm a tea lover, but I'm not going to be a tea master as in the story. 😅No matter that, I loved that we get to learn more about it and follow her state of mind during her study. She really impresses me with her ability to test the tea and figure out what's in it. Each character, who helped her, added something to the story and I enjoyed learning about them. The world-building was really great. Everything is interconnected and we felt like we were there.

You can find in this book:

Exiled Royalty
Magic
A lot of tea
Friendship
Fight of injustice
Conspiracy

Recommend reading this book with a good cup of tea. 🫖😉

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for this advance review copy.

The book starts with Miyara, our princess who doesn't want to be a princess anymore. She chooses to leave the palace and figure out who she is. The book is a bit predictable with her finding friends, finding love, and finding herself, but it was an enjoyable read. The author does a great job of developing Miyara and I believed her transformation from a passive princess who was always trying to be invisible to who she becomes at the end. From the beginning, you can guess how the story is going to end, but it's a fun journey to get there.

The supporting characters were mostly one note and there to support Miyara's development - Lorwyn teaches her about friendship. Risteri is there to be the guide and help her get into the Cataclym. Entero is there to be her guard and protect her. The characters are easy to differentiate, but could have used a little more development. This seems to be common with YA. It didn't detract from the story, but left me wanting more.

The city where Miyara finds herself has a lot of racism and intolerance of a minority. At times, the book felt heavy handed and preachy. Other times, it fit into the story and felt believable.

The book desperately needs a good editor (which might be fixed with the formal release). There were so many missing words. I have never read a book with this many missing words. It felt like the author's computer couldn't type "in". Some of the sentences were unclear for which "he" they were referring to and took 2-3 reads (at one point, it sounded like the cat picked up the blanket). A male character was referred to as "she".

Overall, this was a 3.5 star read for me, rounded up. It's a fun story with friendships, personal growth, tea, and a side of questioning racism.

The day has arrived for Miyara, the fourth princess of Istalam, to choose how she may serve her people. But she has no idea what her path should be. So she renounces her title, flees to a city on the edge of the Cataclysm, and begins to find her place as a Tea Aspirant. But even though she is no longer a princess, Miyara might still yet discover how she can serve her people.

Turns out I have kryptonite and it's fantasy novels featuring tea. I wouldn't say this is the most amazing book I've ever beheld, but it was cosy and adorable and exactly what I needed during a period when I wasn't able to read for more than a few minutes at a time. A Coup of Tea is a like a trusted, always-welcome friend. And it's perfect for a reader obsessed with books and tea.

Lives up to everything I wanted as a cozy fantasy! This books is warm and heart felt with a low level of intrigue and adventure to keep everything moving along. All of the characters are masterfully composed and fully formed, I felt like they always existed and were just waiting for me to arrive. I can't wait to read the rest of the series, and share this book with everyone!

Through NetGalley, I received a free copy of A COUP OF TEA (Book 1 of the Tea Princess Chronicles) by Casey Blair. When Princess Miyara attends a ceremony wherein she must declare her life's purpose, she still hasn't figured it out, so she abdicates and sets out to find her purpose. The comfort and ritual of tea will become an important part of her quest. I enjoyed this book and thought it was an awesome start to a new series. I look forward to the future books.

#ACoupofTea #NetGalley

his book is like a warm hug! I loved it and couldn’t read it fast enough!
It is written beautifully and flows so well.
There’s everything you could want from a fantasy - princesses, found family, a community in need, a love interest and witches to name a few!
The message of the book is great as well - be yourself and take up space!
Thank you so much to the author for the E-ARC I will be continuing the series :)

Also added review to goodreads

Thanks to NetGalley and the Publisher for this ARC! I highly, highly enjoyed this book. The attention to detail, the world building, the feeling of being sucked into this story and not let go was all here and that made reading this book just fly by. I think I read this in less than 3 hours I was that sucked into it. I loved the commentary on people and politics and statehood and refugees, it was all really well done in my opinion. The discussion of ceremony and culture wrapped around expectations of status and location and individuals was also very well done. I also just loved the theme of tea throughout this book and taking the time to sit and be present and to take up space. The big bad in this book wasn't what you expected and the way the author uses the characters and the plot to discuss and make commentary on things like structural inequality and racism was well done.

tl;dr
Fun cozy fantasy with plenty of tea-centric narrative, light romance, and a hopeful message about the power of human connection.

About
Miyara, the fourth princess of Istalam, feels lost. Her sisters all seem to know what they want, but when it comes time for her to dedicate herself, the only path she sees is to give up her crown entirely. And so she goes on the run, hiding in a small town at the edge of the kingdom where strange magic laps at the borders, and the only safe haven she finds is a small, struggling tea shop.

Thoughts
What a pleasant read! While I love an action story, it's also a delight to read a story where conflict is solved largely by listening, developing emotional connections, and the power of community hope. Runaway princess stories have a tendency to speed through the "turns out I was sheltered" portion of the story, but this book focuses entirely on Miyara learning how much her old status in life really kept her out of reality. She's is an interesting lead, equal parts determined fighter and privileged princess, with the determined fighter winning out over the course of the story. Supporting cast all bring alternating perspectives to the story, with Entero probably being my favorite. There's also a very soft drama-free romance, great for fans of hand-holding and copious blushing. Segments about serving tea are thorough and well-researched. The world-building pulls a handful of East Asian influences with a Chinese-inspired tea ceremony, and some Japanese-inspired cultural markers for one of the people groups, but the world itself is not a direct one-to-one metaphor for any particular place. Overall, a great cozy read for anyone who wants a hopeful book about the power of human connection.

paws (stars)-3

keywords- magic, society classes, kingdom themed, friendship, romance

in short- a great, fast paced story full of magic, politics and the warmth of friendship can bring.

Full review

Casey Blair is a new author for me but I’ll definitely check out any book that has her name on from now on, her writing and the flow of her story telling is beautiful.

Casey brings us Miyara, who at around twenty does not know where she fits in the world despite the doors of the world possibly being more open to her, due to her being a princess, to gain the path she so desperately wants, she chooses a road that not only could bring the family wraith upon her but also could be emotionally and physically dangerous. We learn through Miyara story how a person can be personally strong despite doubt, the meaning that friendship can have and the power to make the world a better place for everyone as long as you follow your heart.

The characters we meet along this journey are fully fleshed out and I never questioned their responses and emotions to the situations they were placed in, the realness of the characters made me fall in love with Miyara’s community, this realness is also present in the world, environment and magic system which made it so easy to just become lost in the pages.
Although this storyline is mainly about friendship, there is a budding romance within this plot line that is well written and I can see developing as the chronicles continue

This an interesting yet cosy story plot with fun characters and action that keeps you wanting more but isn't overwhelming and I cant wait to spend more time with Miyara and her world and will be recommending to all I know.

This is a lovely little YA story of a princess finding her own way and building a found family in the process. It is reminiscent of Tamora Pierce for me, very nostalgic since I grew up on those kinds of fantasy stories.

As other reviewers have noted, this is a very earnest story, and I think it works well for its genre. It has some very nice rep without being an information pamphlet or feeling performative. I think it has good messages, even as it is delivered a little blatantly.

"“Not all witches are women,” I say automatically. Our current understanding is that all witches are born with female reproductive organs, but that isn’t the same."

Plotwise, it has a fun adventure/fantasy plot with the requisite mean villain who is a little two dimensional. It has very nice descriptions, maybe a little heavy on them at times, but it does set a beautiful and cozy scene. Same vibe as the cover (which is gorgeous!).

This does have the issue of strongly centering the heroine, as she is the privileged outsider swooping in to help the downtrodden etc. It’s a little iffy at times, since side characters occasionally serve only to teach the MC an important lesson…but again, that’s getting a little picky for the genre.

Overall, I found this to be a delightful YA fantasy adventure with a princess finding herself and her way in a new setting. I would have absolutely adored this as a young teen, and enjoyed it as an adult. I think it has very nice messages built into it as well, and would definitely recommend it to those its written for.

"I grimace. “Wonderful. A hitherto untasted bug. I hope it’s at least magically inert and you haven’t poisoned me?”"

Enjoyable, despite a few (sometimes surprising) flaws.

It's presented as "cosy fantasy," implying that the stakes, while important to the main character, may not be "important" in any larger sense. And at first, that's what we get: a princess renounces her position and family in order to figure out who she is when she isn't letting everyone else define her, flees to the other end of the country, and (by happy coincidence, which fortunately was the only use of this plot device) ends up with a job at a tea shop.

It turns out that her extensive education in etiquette includes the Tea Ceremony, so she gets the idea of attempting to become a tea master. There are tea shop scenes, a sweet low-key romance, a cute cat, other women that she starts to befriend, and interactions with her boss where she uses her emotional intelligence to partially compensate for her extremely sheltered upbringing. (Among the several well-judged telling moments is one where she reflects that she knows the history and all the political wranglings involved in the design of each coin of the realm, but has never actually had occasion to use one.)

So far, it feels like one of those Japanese manga about a young woman in a service vocation largely just dealing with day-to-day life (especially since her name sounds Japanese, plus tea ceremony). As the story goes on, though, the stakes get higher: there's oppression going on against a refugee group (the term "structural inequality" gets thrown around a lot) and maybe the ex-princess can do something about it, if she risks everything?

The setting, unfortunately, is of the scenery-flats variety. I felt it was only just barely worked out enough to enable the plot. For example, there's never any definition of what magic can and can't do or how it works, enabling it to do whatever it needs to, and to provide analogues of contemporary technology like fridges, and also a train which seems to only exist so that she can get across the country in a day. There are occasional intrusions of right-now-this-minute US liberal concepts, like the aforesaid "structural inequality", without any attempt to make them feel organic to the setting. It feels like it's mashed up out of bits of traditional Japanese and contemporary American culture, with some on-the-fly fantasy elements papered hastily over the seams.

In the pre-publication copy I got from Netgalley for review, the editing is mostly good, apart from occasional missing words in sentences and a few surprisingly basic homonym errors, like "nob" for "knob". Hopefully they will be fixed before (re-)publication - I notice that it was originally published in 2017, but is on Netgalley with a publication date of 2 August 2022.

Setting aside these minor flaws, the character work is good, the plot is well constructed, there's an abundance of heart, and the occasional brief philosophical reflections actually have some depth to them. That last point would usually get a book up to five stars for me, but the shonky worldbuilding drags it down to the silver tier of my Best of the Year. That's still a recommendation.

This was a delightful book. I loved the tea theme. I liked the characters and the relationships. There were classist/racist themes. The plot moved at a good pace and it ended so that I can't wait for the next book, but it wasn't a complete cliffhanger. I am excited for the books to release this fall so I can read the entire series.

The book was a Kickstarter in 2017 that raised money for the author to the write and publish the books so all three will be coming out late summer/early fall.

I loved this cozy fantasy. It was full of amazing characters that are learning and growing. I loved the protagonist. Throughout this book she was discovering who she was and how she could give back to the world. I can’t wait to read the second book.

It's always interesting to read about a princess who chooses to live as an ordinary person. And princess Miyara did
exactly that. She was a good protagonist. Intelligent, witty and easy to like. I loved her journey, how she chose freedom in spite of all challenges that come with it. Romance and side characters were fun to read. I can't wait to see where the next book will take us.
If you enjoy smart and strong princesses, magic, romance and of course tea, you'll like A Coup of Tea.