With his impeccable atmospheres and lively characters, Travis Baldree has not only done it again, but done it beautifully -- this time finding the beauty in the temporary stories we live and the impact they carry through our lives in ways we might never imagine.

BOOKSHOPS & BONEDUST stands tall on its own, but pairs even better with LEGENDS & LATTES by strengthening Viv's character and adding a new layer of depth to her story. There's a nugget in BOOKSHOPS & BONEDUST about how we all see the world (and, really, each other) through "little-bitty" windows, and what B&B does is take that little-bitty window that readers got to peer through in L&L and expand it unexpectedly, adding context and perspective that makes the story and its heart even stronger. I hope one day to see even more of these characters -- "in the story after the story".

Wow what an amazing story! To see Viv before Legends & Lattes was let’s say a wild ride. As some may not know this is set before Legends & Lattes. I can wait to see more from Travis Baldree. I Highly Recommend!!!

Bookshops & Bone Dust tells the story of Viv, 20 years before we meet her in Legends & Lattes. If you loved the magical blend of coziness and fantasy that Legends & Lattes had and you're a fan of dusty book shops and skeletons, Bookshops & Bone Dust is 100% for you. After listening to the audio book and Baldree read in person, it's amazing how consistent his performance is and its really fantastic to have him, the author, narrate since you really get an understanding of how he sees and hears the character interactions in his head.

This was just the kind of heartfelt 4-star solid read I was hoping for out of this Legends & Lattes prequel. I was fairly entranced by the cozy setting-up-a-small-business read from L&L, and like Andy Weir going back in Project Hail Mary to doing what he does so well in writing characters engineering out of sticky situations, I was glad to see Baldree going back to the well with the found family around a small business plot (but with a bit of a twist: helping a long-established but struggling business turn the ship around).

Baldree is absurdly good at this kind of plot, and if this is all we get from him I'll line up to buy them on release day every time. I have a suspicion that his stories are going to evolve (and indeed in the acknowledgments he mentioned that this was kind of a fallback book after his planned mystery book didn't come together), but at least I'll always have these two very particular cozy books to return to when I need an infusion of comfort.

Whether inside the musty bookshop that Viv takes on improving as her project or the busy bakery with all of its wonderful smells or walking by the beach and sitting by the sand dunes, Baldree is so immersive with his settings and sensory imagery -- he transports me to these cozy locales and makes me feel appreciative and almost wistful for the small and quiet joys in life. I also really enjoyed how we see Viv falling in love with reading as the insightful bookshop owner places books in her hands that she really connects to. The excerpts we got from her current reads were great little additions.

This book tells an important story from Viv's life during a temporary pit stop in a new location and where she formed short-term but powerful bonds with various people/beings she befriended. This theme around exploring temporary bonds at a point in life where you are on the move and still discovering yourself really resonated with me -- I had a bunch of these kinds of pit stops in my own young adulthood, and I think Baldree really hit the mark with the emotional beats around this.

In terms of my engagement, everything around the bookshop was just chef's kiss and worth the price of admission for me. However, the fantasy intrigue plot that gets woven in throughout was much less engaging to me and always just felt like it was taking me away from what I actually cared about. That being said, it didn't take up too much page time and did lead to the appearance of one of my favorite side characters in Satchel, so it wasn't a total loss but did probably prevent this from being a 5-star read.

Viv was once again a relatable and engaging center around which everything turned, and I enjoyed the new bunch of side characters that grew up around her -- Baldree injects them with so much personality and distinctiveness that they all popped off the page and felt real to me, including the adorable gryphet Potroast (the cute dog-like companion on the cover).

Once again I enjoyed doing this immersively with Baldree's fantastic narration and holding the book with its great cover art and surprisingly enjoyable deckle edges, which for once seemed justified and added to the old book-y feel of the read. Baldree is now two-for-two for me and I eagerly await his future stories!

Thank you to NetGalley and MacMillian for an ARC of this book. I really wanted to love this book. I read the original and this one back to back. I am not sure if cozy fantasy is not for me or if this series is not for me. I did not feel like there was enough action or enough cozy, so I was bored and my mind wandered a lot. It was also difficult to focus as an audiobook. My perception might have been different if ilI read the physical book

💌 Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC

I can't tell if I liked this more than Legends & Lattes. I listened to the audiobook, and whole entertaining, I often found it difficult to keep side characters straight and felt like I would miss large chunks of the story because my interest would wane. I started reading the ebook and quickly stopped due to Netgalley's only having a PDF format of the book, which looks terrible on the Kindle no matter what they say, and picked up the audio a few weeks later.

If you enjoyed the first book, this is a nice little peek into what Viv's life was like before her retirement from mercenary work and the people that helped plant the seed that she could do more than just run at her problems with a big sword all day. If you were so-so on the first book, you'll probably be so-so on this too. It isn't bad, it just didn't hit me the way it seems to hit other readers.

3.5 out of 5.

I was really excited to read Bookshops and Bonedust, especially since it is a highly anticipated cozy fantasy read. Unfortunately, it just wasn't for me. Although the writing was great and it hit all the hallmarks for its intended genre, I think that cozy fantasy is too cozy for my taste. Nothing really happened. Even the climax at the end felt anti-climactic. It's a shame since I really did want to love it.
That being said, I think that it would be more enjoyable to those who find satisfaction in a low stakes fantasy novel.

A cozy fantasy perfect for the wintertime. Bookshops and Bonedust is a charming and charismatic low-stakes fantasy novel filled with love and books. This is the perfect prequel to Legends and Latte’s and fans of Travis Baldree’s first book are sure to fall in love with this one as well. I enjoyed the audiobook, and my experience and level of enjoyment were fairly on par with the first novel.

Viv, an orc adventurer, is stuck in seaside village in order to recover from an battle injury. During her convalescence, she befriends the owner of the local bookshop and discovers a love for reading, as well as a growing sense of community in the town she assumed would be boring.

I am a fan of Legends and Lattes and I was really looking forward to this book. I really enjoyed the narrator, as well as the gender and sexual inclusivity of the characters. However, about a third of the way through, I started to grow bored. I think there was something about the pacing of the book, with Viv's reading and recovery, that didn't grip me in a particular plot. The line between "cozy book" and boring book started to blur. Things were episodic and it was hard to sense a plot building and invest in the audiobook, which I why I am unfortunately giving it 3 stars.

Rating: 4.5/5
I received an audioARC for my honest opinion.

This book is the prequel to Legends and Lattes, if you have read that book this one will be the topping to the cake for you. I loved that this book was still captivating to me as the first one, but with a little bit of a twist to it. If you like action, mystery, romance, and drama then please pick up this book.

This book you will be thrown into a world with a necromancer who is trying to take over, you will be right there, fighting with Viv and getting to know new characters and as well some that you might recognize from L&L. You will find yourself in a cozy (yet at the same time, not so friendly community) after Viv gets injured in battle and was left at this village to heal up. She finds herself very bored and starts to take an adventure around the town, where she finds herself at a bakery and then a bookshop. She doesn’t read much but after talking to the bookshop owner she takes a book and finishes it right away. Viv and the bookshop owner become friends and enjoy many days fixing up her shop so she can make money, but no matter what is going on good in her life at that moment she keeps getting the feeling that something horrible is just right around the corner.

I enjoyed getting to know the new characters in this book and the friendships that blossom. I thought all the characters were easy to connect with and relate with. I loved the scenes that Travis Baldree paints for the audience in his book because I felt as though I was there sitting in the bookshop listening to this audio. I could see the landscapes that he was painting to the emotions that the characters were feeling. I thought the pace of the book was done just right, not too many unnecessary details, and just the right amount of feeling like this mystery was not going to be figured out, so it left you wanting to know more and more until it was all wrapped up beautifully.

I loved that I was taken away to a beautiful village, I was able to meet some amazing characters, read some great books with them and have some amazing bakery treats. I cannot wait to read another book from this author or even be able to listen to another audio book from him. I thought this book was just right for the start of the series. It will leave you with a heart-warming, cozy, mystery that you will get to solve with them.

I want to thank NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the opportunity to review this audiobook.

This book is the cozy hug that I didn’t know I needed. The audio narrator was fantastic, and I just love the low stakes of it all.

So happy we got another book in this series.

This prequel to Legends & Lattes is set 20 years before the events detailed in that book.
Viv is still younger full of fight but injured and this novel covers the time Viv spends in a seaside town recovering.
Yet again this is high fiction with a cozy feel to it - a tale of rest, recuperation with visits to the most delightful bookshop that Viv starts helping at. It is about the joy and community of reading and friendships that are not concerned with outer appearances or being of the
"right kind". This was just lovely!
The way these books are written they can be read as standalones especially with this new one being a prequel there is no necessity to have read Legends & Lattes before diving into this one. Just a fun Easter egg kind of allusion to coffee that Viv hasn't discovered for herself yet.
I love these wonderfully quiet heartwarming and moodboosting books so much.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an arc of this title in exchange for this honest review.

A wonderful story that i honestly found even better than the first book. It was fun, cozy, had slightly more action than the original and was overall a great read.

A good cozy mystery
Definitely will be reading more
Overall 4/5
Anxiety 1/5
Spice 0/5
Bargain (buy bargain borrow burn)

I loved the last book, so I was excited to read this one. It lived up to the hype and I will continue to read about these characters if given the opportunity.

I was lucky enough to get an advance audiobook courtesy of NetGalley, and have based my review accordingly. Absolutely phenomenal! A low stakes cozy fantasy read that keeps the reader in rapt attention the entire time. The occasional bits of stories that the Viv, the main character, reads keep the pacing fresh. The voice acting is both engaging and relaxing, commanding focus while not bringing too much excitement to such a cozy book.

This was exactly what I expected, a cozy fantasy with just enough stakes to keep things interesting but also so sweet and heartwarming. And with delicious sounding food. I need a recipe book for this world next.

I appreciate receiving an ARC for this. I’ll be honest, I just don’t get it. I DNF’d legends and lattes, so maybe this style of cozy isn’t for me.

“Every book is a little mirror, and sometimes you look into it and see someone else looking back.”

Thank you to @netgalley and @Macmillan.Audio for the audiobook arc. The narration by Travis Baldree, no surprises there, is excellent. Since they’re his own characters, Travis captures the voice of each one especially well, making all of them sound unique and convincing. If I could, I would enlist Travis Baldree to read out to me all the books I want to read now.

Well we have to start with that ending. Of all the books to make me cry this year, I’d have never guessed this would be one. For about 90% of the book it was similar to L&L – a nice, cozy slice of life story with some action here and there but after that, it was a super emotional gut punch and I need Travis to write Book 3 right now. I don’t know how to talk about the ending without spoilers, so I’ll just say that I was once again sneakily listening to it in the office and when I got to the end, I was literally wiping off tears praying none of my colleagues would walk up to my cubicle at that exact moment. Also while this book can technically be read first, for maximum enjoyment (subjective) I would say it has to be read after Legends & Lattes.

As with Legends & Lattes, this book makes one feel cozy, warm, and more importantly hungry. I was barely one chapter into the book and was immediately craving potatoes, bacon, and eggs; by chapter 5 I wanted needed biscuits, by chapter 8, I …

I forgot to talk about the author’s prose in L&L but in B&B, it is simply immaculate. He’s able to create the world and immerse the reader into the immediate atmosphere of a scene seemingly effortlessly. The side characters are more fleshed out, more memorable and one or two of them have their individual growth arcs. Before I had read the book, based on the cover and the blurb I guessed that my most favorite character would be Fern (the rattkin) the bookshop owner who swears or Potroast (the gryphet) but it actually turned out to be a character that is introduced almost halfway into the book. I definitely need that character to return in future books.

“Because right things happen at the wrong time”

One thing to note is how well the author layers a theme while still maintaining a gentle and light tone to the story. In L&L, Viv has purposefully made a change to her life and wants a fresh start and hedges it with a bet on a magical artifact that actually turns out to be something else. In B&B, a change has been forced on Viv’s life and as a result she meets some people who are the right people and she does some things that she truly enjoys but the timing might not be right. Another thing to note/love is how most of the readers are going to get nostalgic to the fonder times when they discovered reading or bookshops. I truly enjoyed everything about “Thistleburr” in this story.

My tiny nitpicks with this story are that it has bit more action and higher stakes than L&L and in overall is a touch darker too. It might subjectively work for some people who might have wanted some more action in L&L but my preference is on the lighter side for action in cozy fantasy. I also would have liked some more time spent in or around the bookshop than following the side mystery that was set up.

Overall though, with the way this book has expanded the world and Viv’s backstory, and with the author’s flair for writing instantly teleporting prose, and superb side characters – I am delighted. This is an excellent addition to the legends & lattes world and Travis Baldree was and remains, an auto-buy author for me. My strongest recommendation is to read this via audio.

I think I have to resign myself to the fact that as much as I like cozy fantasy, this version of it is not for me. I feel exactly the same way about Bookshops & Bonedust as I do Legends & Lattes - that is, particularly underwhelmed. Its central premise is Viv’s time before her coffee shop owner days. And while it is an appropriate setup for why she might pivot to this life, it also feels like an odd detour to what we were told her backstory was in the first book.

The problem with a low stakes fantasy, as this is aptly marketed, is that the plot is not going to carry the book. It has to be the characters, and the atmosphere. I’m not expecting grand world building or extravagant quests. I just want interesting characters having interesting conversations. Unfortunately, the characters here felt like neatly packaged versions of a general personality trope - the quirky bookseller or the tsundere gnome that was always supposed to be a “softie” all along. I felt like I could predict every one of their interactions - the banter felt perfunctory.

For some people, I think this familiarity is going to be why they like this series at all, there really are no risks. And I won’t highlight anything in it as technically bad. In fact, I think fans of the first book will love this because it matches the tone exactly and hits many of the same plot beats. But it’s the kind of story that’s going to pass through my mind and will be gone in a few years.

Thank you to the publisher Macmillan Audio for providing an audiobook ARC via NetGalley for an honest review.