Can't spell Treason Without Tear by Rebecca Thorne was one of my favorite indie-published reads when it first came out and I was thrilled to hear it had been picked up for traditional publishing. In this audiobook adaptation, everything I originally loved is still present and greatly enhanced by being able to close my eyes and let the narrator transport me to this beloved setting.

What I love

Lesbians, dragons, books, and tea; need I say more? This book is delightfully cozy and I wish to re-experience it as many times as humanly possible.

What didn't work for me?

pacing in the first fourth feels off as though the inciting incident is taking a bit long to actually hit but honestly that might be becoming more standard based on my recent reads.

Who would I recomend this title for?
If you love cozy fantasy with good representation such as legends and lattes you will be in for a good time with this title.

This book made me look up the word “cozy” in the dictionary to see if I have been misinterpreting it thus far. The only thing cozy about this book is the cover. And listens that isn’t actually a bad thing, but can lead to disappointed expectations. The story is certainly not low-stakes, and while that doesn’t necessarily bother me, it wasn’t what I was promised and really confused me. I kept waiting for less action and more dragon-mystery, banter with nosy townsfolk, dusty books and flakey tea cakes. And while we got a little bookish tea shop sprinkled in, it wasn’t enough to make me fall in love with the story or our MCs. Also, as others have pointed out- the PDA is a tad embarrassing at times. Good enthusiasm, wrong moment. I wanted to badly to love this but it felt clunky at times and I lost interest.

The audiobook is easy to listen to, but I found myself zoning out and having to rewind to catch what I missed. A full cast would be cool, but I think this book may lend itself better to print more than audio. And really that may be a me problem. I just got bored.

Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for this audiobook arc in exchange for my unbiased opinion.

Thank you so much for the audiobook, McMillian.

The narrator was amazing. Her voices and expressions were perfect. She annunciated words well and was easy to understand. Even when you adjusted to faster speeds.

But sadly, I DNF the audiobook and stopped around 10%. I just don't think I was vibing and maybe, Cozy fantasy might not be for me.

I really love the premise of this book. Two characters from different backgrounds, runs away with each other to open a tea and bookstore. Sounds like the start to most of my fairy tales.

Please don't let my review suede you to not read the book (unless you also don't like cozy fantasy), you must try for yourself!

DNF @ 22% -

not bad, but i don't think cozy fantasy is for me. I really felt bored to tears but its a me problem, not the book's problem

Can’t spell treason without tea 🫖 includes relatable characters who want to escape the stresses of their lives by running away to be together and open a cozy book and tea shop (same girls, same!)

This book is self defined as a cozy fantasy, while I can see some aspects of it in the book I wouldn’t personally label it as cozy fantasy. The book goes between low and high stakes throughout the “plot”; however, I had trouble finding the plot?

The title itself leads readers to believe the plot should be centered around well… tea and treason … tea?✅ treason? Ehhhh not so much. There’s also a plot around dragons (which I found to be the most exciting part of the book) however there’s only one scene and a promise? That’s not fulfilled in this book. Plus the bandits were mentioned HEAVILY but that was also forgotten and never resolved? Therefore I found the plot of this book to be minimal at best.

As far as the romance between our two main female characters I did enjoy it however, readers are introduced to them already being in a relationship for years so the “growth” of their relationship wasn’t really captured within the book.

I did enjoy the WLW romance and small town bookshop vibe and would love to find one like that near me 😩 however due to the lack of plot resolve I wasn’t able to enjoy this book as much as I wanted to. Great concept but it fell flat for me.

As far as the audiobook itself goes, I really enjoyed the narrator. The audiobook took me by surprise at the ending though. I thought the plot was finally getting resolved and then the epilogue hit (92%) and ended with the tome of the beginning of their relationship. The flow of this really confused me as a reader until I realized the book was OVER? Interesting.

Huge thank you to MacMillan Audio and Rebecca Thorne for providing the audiobook arc in exchange for my honest review 💕

What a cozy fanasy read Can’t Spell Treason without Tea is! Reyna and Kianthe want a life of their own to open a bookshop of their own that sells tea but Reyna is one of the Queen’s private guards and Kianthe is one of the most powerful mages. But after an assassin takes Reyna, she’s had enough and decides it’s time to take her life into her own hands. This story is cozy and romantic and feels like a DnD adventure. There’s mystery and mishaps and intrigue. I do feel like it went on a little bit as an audiobook and I think it could have been trimmed down some, but I did love the narrator’s voice. The writing was great and the story had adventure and I loved the love between Reyna and Kianthe. They’re such wonderful partners and it was just really sweet overall.

What a wonderful, warm, cozy, fun story. Great over audiobook and now I'm going to have to purchase the hard copy with sprayed edges for my shelf and for re-reads! This is for fantasy booklovers, especially those who enjoyed Legends & Lattes and anything TJ Klune.

Note: thank you NetGalley for a digital ARC of this audiobook. All thoughts are my own.

Thoroughly enjoyed this cozy fantasy. Perfect for fans of Travis Baldree. This is a slice of life fantasy with dragons and a sapphic romance between a mage and Queen’s guard. I assume it is the first installment (with a second coming) as there are a few threads left unfinished.

The narrator did a good job with the audiobook.

Note to the publishing team: the epilogue seemed a bit disconnected. The first part about the pirate ship was a great intro to the second book. Exactly what I expect of an epilogue. The story after (the Meet and Greet) that with the flashback to the main character’s meeting was a bit disjointed from the rest of the book. I could see it being part of a short story collection prequel as a more natural fit. It was a good short story. Just weird as a second epilogue chapter that flashed back in time right after being given a glimpse of the future in book 2.

okay legends and lattes lovers, got a new one for yall that i liked even more.

can't spell treason without tea is a cozy-ish fantasy with an already established sapphic couple that's taking their relationship to the next level - a former queen's guard and the most powerful mage in the land run away together to open up a tea shop/bookstore. I said cozy-ish because the stakes feel a little higher than most cozies, but I also think that's why I loved it more. I loved reading about them navigating their relationship, and while we didn't get to see them fall in love, I really enjoyed a book about what happily ever after really looks like.

I listened to this on audio which I highly recommend! I was worried about being able to differentiate the povs since it's one narrator, but she did an incredible job! each of them has their own accent and were really easy to tell apart!

Rating: 4.5 stars

This is such a delightful cozy fantasy read! Magic, dragons, books, tea, healthy communication, what more could you want?

I really enjoyed the point where this story began. It was refreshing to see an already established relationship have to face the challenges that come after the pining and romantic tension – navigating their future as a couple.

The stakes were just enough to keep the story interesting while never losing the cozy vibes making it the perfect form of escapism.

The extra chapter about how Kianthe and Reyna met had me giggling and kicking my feet. I love them so much!

I would highly recommend the audiobook version of this. I cannot wait for more from this author and this world.

*Thank you NetGalley and MacMillan Audio for this ALC in exchange for my honest opinion

I love a good Cozy story! This was really cute and I just loved the world I was transported to. I think it was a good choice to have a warrior and mage as the main characters that had a couple side quests during the story. I thought the relationships created were heartfelt and made me connect with the story. This is definitely a book I will be sharing with my friends.

I wanted to love this book, but unfortunately it fell flat for me. The premise is all things I love, and the name of the book is perfection. But it calls itself a cozy fantasy (literally on the cover), yet it really isn't. The cozy elements are there, but they're more like filler parts for the actual high stakes events that keep occurring throughout the book. It was reminiscent of Legends & Lattes and Bookshops & Bonedust, but those were actual cozy fantasies without the constant near death, battles, being on the run, etc. Those books showed you can have high fantasy without high stakes, which almost feels like what was confused in Can't Spell Treason. You should feel cozy when reading a cozy fantasy, not be stressed and tense. Too much telling vs showing in the relationship between Reyna and Kianthe left me unable to feel the chemistry between them.

Now to the audio, the narrator Jessica Threet was excellent. I liked the different accents and voices for different characters, they were good for recognizing different people without being too much.

4 stars overall, 5 stars for audiobook and narration, 3 for the book itself. Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan audio for the ALC!

This audiobook is amazing. Instead of romanticizing the start of a relationship, we get to luxuriate in one couple's happily ever after. Kianthe, the "chosen one" most powerful mage alive, and her girlfriend Reyna, a bodyguard to a cold-hearted and murderous queen, run away together. They set out to run a tea/book shop in a small town, they make friends, fight dragons, and trick a bandit ring into community service. No third act break up. High romance, low spice. Narrator does a great job bringing the characters and the world to life, and it's a wonderful story to sink into.

4.5 ⭐️

This novel celebrates taking your fate into your own hands. Our MCs are a mage leader and a queen’s guard who is trained as an assassin. What happens when a guard no longer wishes to serve, especially when serving will lead to her own death?

The vibes I loved: community dynamic, griffins, general bookish theme, cosiness, MCs’ relationship finally getting a chance away from the queendom.

Is this super similar to Legends and Lattes? Vibes: yeah (in a good way). Storyline: I really don’t think so. I don’t see much tying the two stories together other than owning a cosy cafe being a lifelong dream of the MCs and sapphic MC relationship. 🤷‍♀️

Threet’s narration complimented the story. I didn’t find any criticisms to mention. I enjoyed her performance.

A Fantastic Audiobook, narrated to perfection. This is one of my favorite books and seeing it in audiobook format brought me the greatest joy.

Kianthe is the worlds most powerful mage. she craves a normal life with her girlfriend. one she might never get to have, because Raina is a Queens guard to the most ruthless and bloodthirsty queen the world has ever known. nothing can ever be normal between them, until one day, Raina has had enough... and she commits treason to fight for the ability to lead a normal life of her own. they flee together to a corner of the world where they aught to be safe, but with the queens guards after her, magic demanding action, and dragon attacks on the rise, can there ever be anything normal for them?

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC for early review. Review contains spoilers for this title as well as Legends & Lattes to a small extent. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.

Format is audiobook. Jessica Threet does a fantastic job trying to distinguish the voices of our two main female characters through accents and tone and I look forward to more of her work. Her voice for Reyna reminds me a lot of Angela from the new She-Ra series, and her voice for Kianthe reminds me of Adora from the same series. I think that I would have given this an even lower rating if not for the work that she put in.

Can't Spell Treason Without Tea is a self-proclaimed "cozy fantasy" and the first in a new series, and a lot of comparisons have been made between it and Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree. I am going to try my very best not to hold that against this book, because Legends & Lattes is a *true* cozy fantasy, and Can't Spell Treason Without Tea is most assuredly *not.*

The scale of CSTWT wants to be small, comfortable, and cozy, but it is much too wide for itself. Multiple kingdoms, a large involvement with the dictator queen of one realm, bandits, dragons, political conflict, false identities, illustrious and prophetic titles, mysteries, and constant fear of loss, death, or discovery plague this story. This is a full scale, full-stakes fantasy that merely coats its characters in "cozy armor" so that you know there will always be a happy ending, but that does nothing to actually lower the stress and make this a comforting story.

In Legends & Lattes, Viv retires from her life of action after fulfilling her last job with her crew, and departs on her own path forward. The guilt that she feels stems from her own cowardly actions of not being able to say goodbye, the fear that she feels stems from the fact that she is gambling her future success on a folk legend with no proof it will actually influence her to be lucky. Her anxiety relates to trying new things, unsure if she will be good at them, like hiring staff, hanging up her sword, deciding on menu prices. But Viv has a plan. She has already placed the order for a coffee grinder. She has saved up the money she needs to build an establishment from nearly the ground up. She has a floor plan, for God's sake. When shit hits the fan, Viv isn't able to lose everything, specifically because of the friendships she has forged and the success she has had. Despite this, you still feel the aching loss alongside her, the depression and the emptiness that come from even something so small when placed alongside the grand scale of other fantasy stories, because we have been living in the small scale of Viv's fantasy, a fantasy that succeeded and made her so, so happy.

In CSTWT, Reyna is the very important direct guard to the extremely ruthless and murderous queen, and decides one day that she has had enough, and commits treason by abandoning her post entirely and fleeing the kingdom. Her girlfriend is all too happy to abandon her own responsibilities as the Chosen One of the mages and join her in the small town where they settle in, the small town that just so happens to also contain another defector of the same queen, a mage who defected from the mage society Kianthe is the Chosen One of, and an extremely easily defeated and pushover group of bandits. Reyna and Kianthe's decisions to abandon their lives creates an overarching sense of anxiety and dread, because they did not tie their ends up neatly or prepare for this. They are now both wanted, and Reyna is at risk of being fucking *executed* for her treason. And when they make land in Tawney, a quiet, absolutely idyllic little town, they just happen to come across the perfect barn to adapt into their bookstore/library/tea shop/plant store, with the only issue being that it needs some fresh paint, stock to sell, and the laylines of magical power that Kianthe draws from are really weak. Which is fine, because Kianthe is so utterly overpowered that it is completely necessary to kneecap her with these laylines in order to make the story actually move slowly. Oh, and she is a massive political figure, since she was chosen by the magical mage rock to be the Avatar of the elements, so she's handicapped by that just a bit. And Reyna is just terrible at self-care, which comprises the entirety of her struggle and character in the story.

When Reyna and Kianthe experience problems, the problems are fucking massive. Reyna nearly dies falling off a roof while already being sick from an infected injury she got early in the story. Kianthe fights off multiple dragons at once without sustaining any physical injuries and the only consequence is that she is drained of magic and needs to rest. They are both using false names every other day or so, being entirely inconsistent with it, and let their true identities slip constantly. I can't even call the bandit group a problem, because they are so laughably an attempt to insert plot points from Legends & Lattes into the story. Reyna defeats them so easily and then recruits them to work for her as spies, because again, she is a criminal who is wanted for treason, and needs to vigilantly watch her back at every step. Even though she doesn't. For fuck's sake, they even adopt a helpless little assistant in the exact same manner as Viv adopts Pendry, the bard.

Despite all of these massive stakes, no one ever loses anything. Reyna recovers and is fine. Kianthe recovers and is fine. They never lose a single thing, they never want for anything, they never struggle or fail. This does nothing to relieve the stress of the reader who is hopped up on these deadly stakes and anxiety from the get-go. These two characters shouldn't have any control over these massive problems but they do, and it's terrible. I can at least say that they have a loving and communicative relationship that never falters, but I don't feel drawn to them as a couple at all.

The stakes of this story are too high, but the dangers are laughable. Almost all of the stress comes directly from the actions of the main characters and their poor decision making skills. The shop that they open together is a farse of a plot point, a sidenote in the greater story of political terror and running from the law and destiny. This is NOT cozy fantasy. This is a fantasy that wants to be cozy. This is a dragon who is the heir to a dragon throne that wants to be a gecko and stomps into a gecko house and says "I live here now," and doesn't give a singular shit about the fact that by doing that, they have made all kinds of problems for the geckos who lived there before and the dragons they abandoned. The dragon is cozy because the dragon can breathe fire and kill anything that challenges it. The geckos are not cozy because there's a fucking dragon killing anything that challenges it in their house.

The writing is a strange mishmash of decisions at the best of times. It feels very middle-grade in descriptions and dialogue, the stakes feel very overdone YA fantasy, the plot is messy, the side characters are thin and forgettable, the setting is weak and half-baked, and the romance is probably only passable because of the focus on communication between the two of them. I think this needed a beta reader or an editor or a squad of first draft readers.

I think the hardest part about this book is the fact that I can tell Rebecca Thorne is a massive fan of Legends & Lattes. I see so much of the heartbeat of L&L in CSTWT and I know that she has a deep love for that story, but I can't say that this story succeeded in being it's own version.

A high-ranking bodyguard and the most powerful magical person, what could they have in common? Their love for each other and a deep desire to start a simple life somewhere else. This is a story of two women, who hold high-ranking positions in their world and their journey to build their ideal life, in a cozy bookstore/tea shop. While each has a vast amount of responsibility and one even runs the risk of execution, they journey to a small town to build their life together. A cute and very cozy sapphic fantasy romance. '
While I am a big fantasy and romance reader, I'm relatively new to cozy fantasy. This was a fun read though! I liked the low steaks adventure of the story. No one died, and it was in fact, very cozy.

Thank you NetGalley and Rebecca Thorne for allowing me an ARC copy of this book! My review is my own thoughts and feelings of the story and production of the audiobook. The narration was great. Generally I feel like I don't notice how the narration impacts a story, unless it's bad. This was not bad, she did a good job with different voices to help keep the dialogue straight. Sometimes it's also funky when you speed it up, but that wasn't the case with this narration. I was able to listen at a higher speed with no issues.

This is such a cozy story. A member of the Queen’s private guard and the most powerful mage run away together to set up a cozy tea shop / bookstore in a village bordering on dragon lands.

It made me want to pour a cup of tea and curl up in a chair in front of a fireplace with a book in my hands and my yet-to-be-hatched griffon egg tucked snuggly into a box beside me.

My favorite parts were the scenes with the griffons and the bonus content that shared the story of how Reyna and Kianthe fell in love.

Narrator Jessica Threet captures the cozy fantasy vibes with her narration, and I liked her accents for both Reyna and Kianthe.

I received an advance copy of the audiobook from Macmillan Audio and NetGalley. All review opinions are my own.

A cozy sapphic love story between a Queens guard and the greatest mage of the realm. There are some big stakes, but the majority of the book is community and relationship building.

What a delightful book! I loved the narrator, the relationship between the two main characters, and getting to know their backstory as it catches up to them. I wanted to know more about some story pieces that weren't tied up, which I guess is good for wanting to read a sequel!

I loved this so much! It’s cozy, it’s interesting, it’s fun. The main characters are delightful & endearing. The side cast is also enjoyable. The main story line is both sweet & intriguing, but the side storylines make the book. I can’t wait for the sequel!

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC of this audiobook!