Marie

I started Legends & Lattes as an audiobook, but ended up switching to the ebook. Mostly because I didn’t want to keep using Spotify, but also because I realised I wanted to take my time with it. And honestly, I’m really glad I made the switch. This turned out to be one of those books that feels like a break from the world : warm, easy to sink into, and just genuinely comforting.

The story brings together a small group of characters who are all, in their own way, trying to start over. It’s satisfying to watch them figure things out, take chances, and slowly build something new. There’s a real sense of found family, of people choosing to be kind, and of creating space for yourself outside of what’s expected.

Also: be prepared to crave coffee and pastries. The café setting is so vivid you can almost smell the cinnamon rolls. It’s the kind of book that makes you want to bake something, wrap yourself in a blanket, and keep reading until it’s dark outside.

The pacing is great ; short chapters, an easy flow, and a softness that makes it perfect when you’re feeling burned out or just want something gentle. There’s a bit of slow-burn romance in the background, but it never takes over. What really stays with you is the quiet joy of building a life that actually feels like yours.

This was my first Travis Baldree book, and I’ll definitely be picking up more. If you’re into cozy fantasy with good food, good people, and lots of heart, this one’s worth a spot on your reading list.

I really enjoyed The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches. The story is soft and comforting, but it also includes more mature moments that feel natural and well integrated. Nothing felt forced or out of place.

I loved how the magical world was developed, especially the way each witch approaches magic in her own way. The book has a lot of heart, and it explores identity, community, and found family with real warmth and care.

The ending is very happy, and yes, you kind of expect it, but it’s still deeply satisfying. It’s exactly the kind of feel-good resolution I was hoping for, even if a bit hallmark-y.

The only small thing that threw me off a bit was the way the children were written. It was sometimes hard to tell their ages or get a strong sense of their individual personalities. But that didn’t take away much from the overall experience.

If you’re looking for something comforting, uplifting, and gently magical, this book is a lovely choice.

I was so relieved to finally get past the endless pretty talk ! The “special talk” is still around, but it feels more subtle did not drive me mad. The pacing is fast and sharp, which makes the book really easy to fly through.

What kept me hooked was the way radicalization and the weaponization of Specials are written. The Specials are terrifying in how they’re reshaped into these loyal, almost inhuman predators, and that gave the story an interesting layer.

At the same time, I can’t shake how uneasy I felt about the way self-harm is handled. It didn’t sit right with me, especially in a YA book. And as much as I’ve tried, I still can’t like Tally. She feels distant, hard to connect with, and I found myself caring more about the themes than about her journey.

I did like how things wrapped up between Tally and Cable, but David and the others left me cold. And overall, I was a bit disappointed that the world itself wasn’t explored more deeply, there was so much potential for richer worldbuilding that never quite came through.

Better paced than Uglies and still an easy YA read, but the Pretty-speak nearly broke me. Tally’s still exhausting and making all the wrong choices, the drama’s all over the place, and only a few twists actually land / are unexpected.

That Pretty-speak is brutal. I know it’s supposed to be part of the world-building, but after a few chapters I was ready to throw the book across the room.

Tally still got entitled pick-me energy, even post-op. She insists she’s a courageous independent woman that did everything herself while basically everyone else is doing the heavy lifting and helping her every time she whines.

The plot is wild in that “bad fanfic” kind of way: identical pills with completely different effects (and no directions?!), Tally somehow curing her lobotomy because she’s just so special, and a few turns that are anything but subtle.

I’ll admit there are moments where it actually works, like the chapters in the nature reserve, where the pace slows down and you get a little more world building. The bigger world, the Specials, the Savages, the creepy social engineering still has me curious for book three. I just hope the Pretty-speak gets toned down because I can’t stand another page of it.

Paradise Rot is a short, strange, and deeply sensory novella. The story follows Jo, a quiet and solitary biology student who moves to a foreign country and finds herself sharing a decaying house with Carral, a woman whose boundaries, both physical and emotional, seem to slowly dissolve. What begins as a story of awkward cohabitation quickly morphs into something much more intimate and surreal. It’s a coming-of-age tale, but one that unfolds in moldy corners and between damp sheets, full of bodily fluids, rot, and a gradual blurring of the self.

Hval’s writing is incredibly vivid and sensory: you feel the dampness, the stickiness, the scent of compost and overripe fruit, the heaviness of warm, moisture-laden brewery air. It often flirts with the grotesque, with recurring images of decay, bodily excretions, and a house that seems as alive and watchful as its inhabitants. There’s a lot of piss and rot in this book—there’s clearly some symbolic weight to it, maybe linked to bodily discovery and transformation, but I’ll admit some of it went over my head.

At times, the whole book feels like a fever dream, or like drowning slowly in a humid mattress that smells of mushrooms and sex.

I was particularly struck by how the book portrays male presence. The male gaze here is invasive, unsettling, something to be peeled off the skin. In contrast, the intimacy between Jo and Carral feels organic, overwhelming, and hard to define, melding self and other until their identities blur.

Paradise Rot is a quick read, but a dense one, sticky and alive with sensation, perfect to devour in one sitting on a hot summer night when your own skin feels too close. It left me feeling disoriented, slightly grossed out, and strangely moved.