Happy New Year! It’s finally time to officially start the
Legends and Lattes and Bookshops and Bonedust by Travis Baldree
I couldn’t have a list of cozy fantasy recommendations without mentioning the book that helped propel the subgenre into its current popularity, Legends and Lattes. This is a very gentle, slow-paced fantasy novel about an orc hanging up her sword to start a coffee shop in a town where no one has even heard of coffee. It has low stakes, a found family element, and a slow-burn F/F romance. The prequel is out now, and it’s just as good, but set in a rundown bookstore. And it has an owl/pug gryphet named Potroast!
Hakumei & Mikochi: Tiny Little Life in the Woods by Takuto KashikiComics are a great place to explore cozy fantasy! This cozy fantasy manga is about two little sprites living in the woods together, getting into adventures. It’s absolutely adorable, and each volume is a kind of short story collection, offering vignettes about them searching for their lost wallet in the market, or visiting a friend, or making food together. It’s a very gentle read, and there are eleven books in the series so far! |
Oh, I almost forgot, let me introduce you to the mascot of this year’s Read Harder Challenge: my dog Scrappy. You’ll be seeing a lot of him. He’s a three-year-old little pitbull mix that I adopted from Mexico nine months ago, and he is a menace. I adore him. This is a picture of us watching the first sunrise of 2024 together.
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Which cozy fantasy book are you planning to read to complete task number one? Let us know in the comments! I’d also love to hear which tasks you’re looking forward to, and which you think will be hardest to complete.
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