This was an interesting concept but for me just falls short of doing anything really well.

Legends & Lattes is a fantasy slice-of-life which follows a main character called Viv as they try to put down their weapons after a life of fighting and settle down to build a coffee shop. As one might expect this book does not contain huge stakes or world-ending catastrophes, the problems faced are small, simple and very predictable. This isn’t a problem in itself but when a book doesn’t have an incredible plot, it has to be propped up by its characters and setting.

My main gripe with this book is the characters, they feel like lifeless husks. Some feel like caricatures pulled straight from a tumblr post. One of the main reasons for this might be the word count; it attempts to develop so many characters in so little time that it was bound to fail. In one instance the main character makes a big deal of calling one of the side characters by their actual name but then later on goes to shorten a different characters name despite being told repeatedly that he didn’t want it shortened. This kind of sloppy writing really takes me out of the wholesome mood that the book tries to cultivate and comes across as very inconsistent.

The world itself is also fairly mediocre. I have nothing good or bad to say about it because there is very little attempt to describe anything of the world outside of the coffee shop. The story itself is very predictable, after reading fifty pages you can probably guess the rest.

After ruminating on this review after the past month or so, I’ve decided to knock the rating down to 2 stars. There are some good points but they’re so few and far between that I can’t justify 3 stars.