Book Review: ‘Bookshops and Bonedust’ by Travis Baldree

‘Legends and Lattes’ was a delightful hit for me earlier in the year so I was extremely excited to hear that we’d be getting another book with Viv and her world this year.

We’re getting into the perfect season for a cosy fantasy, even better when it’s a cosy fantasy starring bookshops and bakeries, and I ate it up!

Set twenty years before the events of Legends & Lattes, Bookshops & Bonedust is a standalone cosy fantasy by BookTok sensation Travis Baldree about the power of good bookshops, great friends and the unexpected choices along the way.

First loves. Second-hand books. Epic adventures.

Viv’s career with the renowned mercenary company Rackam’s Ravens isn’t going as planned. Wounded during the hunt for a powerful necromancer, she’s packed off against her will to recuperate in the sleepy beach town of Murk – so far from the action that she worries she’ll never be able to return to it. What’s a thwarted soldier of fortune to do?

Spending her hours at a struggling bookshop in the company of its foul-mouthed proprietor is the last thing Viv would have predicted. Even though it may be exactly what she needs. Still, adventure isn’t far away. A suspicious traveller in grey, a gnome with a chip on her shoulder, a summer fling and an improbable number of skeletons prove Murk to be more eventful than Viv could have ever expected.

Sometimes, right things happen at the wrong time. Sometimes, what we need isn’t what we seek. And sometimes, we find ourselves in the stories we experience together . . .

While I didn’t adore ‘Bookshops and Bonedust’ in the way that I did ‘Legends and Lattes’, it was still a quick, easy and involving read and I’m so glad I got to read it early.

Travis Baldree writes the most evocative settings and Murk is no exception. This is a small seaside town that I would spend a few weeks healing in with glee. There’s a cosy (if slightly dilapidated) bookshop, a bakery bursting with goodies, and a stern guard captain to contend with - it all sounds delightful. Even with such a small space to work around, Baldree fills these spaces with characters that are bursting with life. Everyone is so rich and layered, full of complexity and detail, that it’s impossible not to fall in love with them and their day to day lives. For the books and worlds that I fall in love with, someone that I always wish for is more time with them in their day to day - Travis Baldree delivers just that.

Getting to see Viva at the beginning of her career was such a treat - she obviously has a very different view on her career at this point to when we first met her and it’s so interesting to see the seeds that were planted in Murk and how they would grow into the Viv of ‘Legends and Lattes’. She’s a wonderful character to follow at all stages and I hope we get more about her - particularly a sequel to ‘Legends and Lattes’ tying in some of the characters from ‘Bookshops and Bonedust’ which was hinted at the end of the novel.

Thank you to Tor and NetGalley for the early review copy.

Is ‘Bookshops and Bonedust’ on your TBR?

Written by Sophie