Another enjoyable cozy queer fantasy book! While this one didn't grab me as much as Baldree's previous book, it was still sweet, fun, and a nice escape.

2022’s Legends & Lattes made waves by acting as a wormhole for many readers into the wide world of cozy, low-stakes fantasy. In our review, we praised the book, adoring its mellow narrative and simple, heartfelt messages. This year, author Travis Baldree followed his landmark hit with Bookshops & Bonedust, a prequel story emblematic of Baldree’s improvement as a storyteller.

Bookshops & Bonedust follows Viv, the orc coffee shop owner and ex-barbarian of Legends & Lattes fame. In this prequel, we meet Viv when she’s a wide-eyed mercenary, running with a company called Rackam’s Ravens. Viv’s eagerness to prove herself turns painful when an enemy spears her leg and renders her useless. Rackam drops her in the seaside town of Murk to recover, promising he’ll return to fetch her once the Ravens track down and incapacitate the necromancer Varine. Viv explores Murk as her leg recovers, unearthing hidden gems, making new friends, and discovering threatening secrets.

I first want to commend Travis Baldree for this exquisite follow-up. Bookshops & Bonedust inched its way to the “top” of my TBR box (it’s actually the far left), and I felt…trepidation. Legends & Lattes was a charming and delightful book, but its prose was somewhat mechanical. I don’t blame Baldree for this, knowing the book was written for National Novel Writing Month and that it was his first published work. I also remember Legends & Lattes being so low stakes I struggled to remember much of it, instead allowing the story to drift out of my brain like the cartoon scent of a windowsill pie.

Bookshops & Bonedust quelled all of these worries with plenty of panache. Baldree’s writing has drastically improved from good in Legends & Lattes to great in Bookshops & Bonedust. There are still some hiccups, some weirdly repeated words, and awkward turns of phrase. Despite this, I found the book breezy and readable, with a few gems of glowing prose in some segments.

Baldree also gives himself some wiggle room to up the stakes. In the first book, the worst threat to Viv’s well-being was losing her shop. In Bookshops & Bonedust, there’s a distinct (if distant) villain who poses an actual threat to Viv and her comrades. This is by no means the focus of the novel, but it serves a crucial purpose. With the looming threat of the villain on the page, Bookshops & Bonedust has a brisk pace that its predecessor couldn’t achieve. Here for the coziness? Not to worry; Baldree offers it in droves, centering Viv’s exploits on a ramshackle seaside bookshop in need of an upgrade.

I also found Baldree’s character work significantly improved here. Viv develops sweet and unique relationships with the denizens of Murk, including Maylee, a dwarf who laid down her mace and opened a bakery. Then there’s Fern, the foul-mouthed rattkin owner of the bookshop, and Gallina, a feisty gnome who wants Viv to put in a good word with Rackam when he returns.

Viv also gets an upgrade in this novel, with an actual internal conflict to grapple with. She grows attached to her friends in Murk while her impending return to the mercenary life lurks in the back of her mind. She struggles to reconcile her eventual departure with the feelings of those she will leave behind. It’s a touching message that feels unique to Viv and endlessly relatable at once.

Despite my early misgivings (for which I have only myself to blame), Bookshops & Bonedust was a fitting end to a great year of reading for me. It was my final book of 2023, and it felt in many ways like a love letter to readers.

Viv the orc in her prime age, got a serious battle injury on her leg. Her superior left her in a small coastal town to recuperate. She’s so bored that enter a sad-looking secondhand bookstore in that area, even though she’s never interested in reading before.

I… didn’t enjoy it as much as L&L but that’s probably a me problem. The big portion of this book is about reviving the secondhand bookstore and the process of finding joy in reading which I think is a little silly for a topic because everyone who read this book is obviously a reader already??

There’s also a lot of friendships made along the way, while of course there’s a side “threat” that ensues Viv but since this is a prequel that was released later and we know that Viv is completely fine in L&L, the stakes & tension felt lower than it should. Also about the epilogue that’s clearly set after L&L, so even though this is a prequel it contains spoilers to the supposedly 2nd book. In short, whichever book you read first, you’re gonna get spoiled.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this ARC. 'Bookshops and Bonedust' is a warm, cozy fantasy reminiscent of playing Dungeons and Dragons with your closest friends. However, I wish there had been more sustenance to the story. Maybe it's just me since people seem to love this book but I like a little more plot and character development in my fantasy books. Still, this is a wonderful read for anyone wanting something light and cute.

Bookshops & Bonedust is the prequel to Legends & Lattes where Viv, after getting injured during a job, gets left behind in the small beach town of Murk to recover. With not much to do and on crutches, Viv spends her hours in a bookshop in the company of its foulmouthed owner and their pet named Pot Roast. It’s not where she saw herself being, but maybe it’s just what she needs.

But the sleepy town doesn’t stay very quiet for long - there’s a suspicious traveler in gray, a gnome with a chip on her shoulder, a summer fling, and a lot of skeletons to uncover.

Tell me why I waited so damn long to read this book?? I knew I would love it. A soft fantasy with a found family feel - those will always have me signed up.

This novel is also so adorable when it comes to talking about books. The amount of times I took photos of entire passages where Fern was talking to Viv about her latest book read ❤ ️ <spoiler> like the bit where Viv is reading a spicy romance and Fern is just staring at her with a crazy grin </spoiler>.

If you’re in need of a warm fantasy to curl up with, this will do it for you. There’s no high stakes - the fact it’s the prequel to the first book, kind of gives away that everything will be okay in the end, you know? Still, watch me give these series out as recommendations left and right.

*Thank you Tor and NetGalley for an advance digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

Bookshops & Bonedust is exactly what you want in a cozy fantasy. It does what it says it’s going to do. There is adventure, friendship, and problems that are fixable. I laughed and gasped, but there was never despair. What a gem of a prequel.

I really enjoyed this book! It gave the same vibes as legends and lattes which is what I really needed!

4 stars

Bookshops & Bonedust was a delight to read. Now to simply put it, Lattes & Legends was one of my favorite reads last year. It is a book I hold very close and will forever consider it a comfort read. Bookshops & Bonedust was almost just as good.

One of my favorite things about these books is the author himself narrates them. And he does such a great job. When I recommend these books, I always suggest the audiobook. He does such a great job doing the characters and helps me paint the story in my head.

But the story itself was wonderful. As always quaint, cute, and absolutely comforting. If you need a feel-good read, then this is the book for you. It will instantly put a smile on your face.

This was the cutest sequel I’ve ever read. Cozy fantasy at its best! I may have liked this one better than the first. The different characters are so engrossing that I fell in love with them!!!!

“And for while, the future didn’t matter. And that was fine.” That’s how I felt reading this prequel to LEGENDS AND LATTES. I loved that this one took place by the sea. In a bookshop. Maybe because I have been longing for a vacay by the sea for years and I actually felt that I could hear the waves crashing on the dunes. I love stories set in bookshops. Did you know that there was an enchanted skeleton who loves to organize? I LOVE to organize! I might have liked this one better than LEGENDS & LATTES although I missed the coffee.

Prior to reading Travis Baldree's Legends and Lattes, I was unfamiliar with "cozy fantasy". I'm not the biggest reader of fantasy in general and had consumed some big name series but that was about it. Reading Legends and Lattes felt like stepping into a warm embrace, full of magic and love, and my eyes were open to a whole new experience. Needless to say, Bookshops and Bonedust contains all of the warmth and depth of character as it's predecessor. Of course, I dropped everything at the chance to know more about Viv's background because, let's be honest, she's one of my favorite characters of all time. While the events in this book precede Legends and Lattes, I believe a reader comes to this book best after having read the former.

I really enjoyed this book! Cozy fantasy is definitely having a moment, and it's book like this that best exemplify why this subgenre is drawing so much attention. It has all of the whimsical world-building of a classic fantasy, but the story focuses in more closely on its endearing characters and the relationships they form and navigate between one another.

I hadn't actually read "Legends and Lattes" before picking this book up, so I think it speaks well of it that I was still able to enjoy this one immensely. If anything, I suspect I enjoyed this one more than I would have had I known the outcomes of Viv's life later on. I always love stories like this that focus on warrior who have either retired due to age or injury and are having to face a very different life than the action-packed on they had lead before. Of course, the author was clever to have this warrior character then discover the joys of reading! Any book fan reading this will thusly immediately find Viv sympathetic and endearing in this way.

I also enjoyed the side characters we see here and the relationships that Viv formed with them. There was also a surprising amount of action and fight scenes in this book; with cozy fantasies, one is never quite sure how well the balance between "coziness" and action will be done. As I'm typically a regular fantasy reader, I enjoyed the fact that this book still had these action scenes.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book! I think it will likely appeal to all fans of cozy fantasy, and I'm definitely interested in checking out the first book in the series sometime soon!

Legends & Lattes was one of my favorite books of 2022 so I was very highly anticipating Travis Baldree’s prequel novel set in the same world and still following Viv, the loveable orc barbarian, on an adventure that took place before she decided to open her own coffee shop in Thune. In Bookshops & Bonedust, Viv has just suffered an injury while her adventuring party was chasing down a necromancer, and they force her to spend time in a cozy seaside town called Murk while she heals. At first Viv is incredibly bored, but she meets the bookstore owner Fern who basically pushes a novel on her and turns Viv into a voracious reader. She begins spending her time at the bookstore helping Fern vamp up her selection and decor in the hopes of attracting more patrons. She also becomes friends with Maylee, the town baker, and Gallina, the dwarf we met in Legends & Lattes. Bookshops & Bonedust lays the seeds in Viv’s mind for how her future could be if she were to retire from adventuring. The Viv we meet in Bookshops has a totally different mindset than our L&L Viv and it’s fun to see her mindset transformation occur. I really enjoyed this installment in Travis Baldree’s cozy low stakes fantasy world, but it’s worth noting that I did enjoy book one more for two reasons. The first being that I liked the supporting cast of characters better in L&L, and the second being that the story felt too similar to book one for me. While it was fun to read and spend more time with Viv, I don’t think it added a lot to the series. The one part that did strike a chord is the epilogue which is set after Legends & Lattes. If you haven’t checked either of these out yet and you like the idea of a cozy fantasy novel, I would definitely recommend Travis’s books, however, I would read them in publication order otherwise the ending of Legends & Lattes will be spoiled for you in Bookshops & Bonedust.

This was a lovely follow up to Legends and Lattes. I don't think I loved it as much as the first book but I did enjoy my time with these characters as we revive the book shop and look at Viv early on in her career before she gets to the person we meet in legends and lattes. I might be done with following Viv as a character but would be happy to read other works but out in this world when I am in the mood for a more low stakes halmark movie like fantasy story.

4.5/5 ⭐️

My heart, oh my goodness. I just love Viv so much and truly this book was a delight. Although different than legends and lattes with a more bittersweet ending (as we know this is a prequel) and more stakes it still had so much heart. It was so fun getting to see Viv in her younger years so very contrary but also so many parallels to the Viv in Legends & Lattes. Besides Viv, Fern was such a fun addition to the story and just a hilarious ratkin with a sailor's mouth and I love her even more for that. Also, we meet someone from Viv's past and future in this story and it was so exciting to see and understand that background more. Outside of the characters I also loved the higher stakes involved including the bits of magic we got to see included as well. The only piece that was a little lacking for me personally was in parts the pacing at the beginning was a bit on the slower side, still very enjoyable but that was my primary reason if I had to name one of why this wasn't five stars. Overall I absolutely loved the book and I NEED more stories with Viv and Fern!

"Because I'm headed down the hill, and you're headed up it. I'm just glad we chanced to meet on the way."

This book has left me sobbing with a full heart.

Bookshops & Bonedust takes us back to the L&L world but during a time when Viv was just getting into her mercenary work.

She got a little ahead of herself and ended up hurt and needing some recovery time in a small town. With nothing to do she got up and found a bookshop that needed some help.

We follow viv as she falls in love with reading, friends, and her first love. The story that was told was beautiful and by the end I was so invested in the characters I was crying from saying goodbye.

I cannot wait to see what Travis releases next and hope we get to see more of this world!

Thank you so much for the ARC through NetGalley! I had some issues with the digital copy and waited for release (and life) before I had a chance to read it!

Bookshops and Bonedust by Travis Baldree
Travis Baldree’s debut novel Legends and Lattes marked him as one of the leading voices in cozy fantasy—tales that focus as much on the relationships and day-to-day lives of fantasy characters as they do on traditional fantasy plots. In Bookshops and Bonedust, Baldree revisits his main character, an orc adventurer named Viv, but at a much, much earlier point in her career.


After charging headlong into battle against an undead army, Viv’s injured, and her company leaves her in a small port town to recover while they pursue the bad guy. Annoyed and impatient, Viv ends up making the best of her stay by getting involved with some of the locals—she befriends ratkin bookshop proprietor, Fern, and decides to help get Fern’s business off its feet. She also embarks on a romance with Maylee, a retired dwarf adventurer who has started a bakery in town, even though both of them know they have an expiration date. The sense of found family (and the perils of small business ownership) that made Legends and Lattes so fun are both here in spades, but a more traditional fantasy subplot weaves together this adventure with the Viv readers met in the first book, and gives Viv something concrete to triumph over. Definitely keep this one on hand for a cloudy day (and make sure to smell the pages of the book for full immersion).

I read Legends & Lattes over the summer and it instantly became one of my favorite reads of 2023. I’m so glad cozy fantasy became a thing because it is just what my heart needed this past year.

Bookshops & Bonedust takes place before the events of Legends & Lattes. While you do not necessarily need to read Legends & Lattes prior to reading this, you will need to in order to understand the epilogue.

After an injury sustained during her time in a mercenary group, Viv is forced to recover in the seaside town of Murk. Here Viv befriends the owner of a rundown bookshop, Fern. The story revolves around Viv discovering the joys of reading, helping Fern revitalize her bookshop, and small town living.

I really enjoyed that this story focused more on friendship than romance. These characters, and their dynamics, make this book an absolute joy to read. It really was a charming slice of life type of book that is best enjoyed cozied up with a warm drink in front of a fire.

The ending to this one made my heart so happy. While Baldree could end the series here, I’m hopeful for at least one more installment. One thing is certain, Baldree has solidified himself as an auto-buy author for me moving forward. I cannot wait to see where he takes us next.

***Thank you to NetGalley for providing an eArc in exchange for an honest review***

Another hit by Travis Baldree!! I think it lived up and surpassed my expectations of a prequel from Legends & Lattes! I thoroughly enjoyed the backstory they gave Viv and her adventures before settling down in L&L. The coziness continues with this one, and something about it being around a bookshop made it even more enjoyable. Although I’m not a big fan of fantasy, Baldree’s books always have a hold on me and allow me to escape to other worlds. Hopefully we see more stories in this world!

What a delight it was to return to these characters in such a heartfelt way. I loved the new characters, and the epilogue had me crying happy tears.