Cozy Reads for Cold Days || Let’s Talk Bookish

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme, hosted by Aria @ Book Nook Bits, where we discuss certain topics, share our opinions, and spread the love by visiting each other’s posts.

This week’s Let’s Talk Bookish topic is books to read by the fire . . . which of course always makes me think of cozy reads! You know, the sort you can curl up under a blanket, with a dog by your side and cat on . . . whatever part of your body the cat wants because it’s a cat . . . and enjoy.

We’re actually just coming off our first (and hopefully only?) snowstorm this year, which basically stopped everything for two-thirds of a week. So this post is slightly late with its timing for here and hopefully doesn’t herald anything to come? Because snow is wet, cold, and overrated and I don’t want to do it again.

The cozy reads I have for you today are good for any time, really. They’re the sort that are just so feel-good that they leave you with the warm fuzzies, like someone gave you the best sort of bear hug, right when you needed it the most. Tall order for a book, I know, but these books somehow manage it. So grab yourself a blanket or two, maybe a pillow if you need, and prepare to get cozy!

Legends & Lattes

After a lifetime of bounties and bloodshed, Viv is hanging up her sword for the last time.

The battle-weary orc aims to start fresh, opening the first ever coffee shop in the city of Thune. But old and new rivals stand in the way of success — not to mention the fact that no one has the faintest idea what coffee actually is.

If Viv wants to put the blade behind her and make her plans a reality, she won’t be able to go it alone.

But the true rewards of the uncharted path are the travelers you meet along the way. And whether drawn together by ancient magic, flaky pastry, or a freshly brewed cup, they may become partners, family, and something deeper than she ever could have dreamed.

There’s nothing cozier than a mercenary, in all good faith, hanging up her sword to make an honest living selling coffee. Even if nobody in town knows what the heck that is. Maybe especially then. Viv has decided that her days of battle are behind her, and she settles down in Thune determined to start a new life selling a thing called coffee, which is a delicacy she discovered on her travels. But a coffee shop is hard work, and Viv discovers she’s going to need a band of a different sort to get it off the ground.

This is a really cozy slice of life story that focuses on fulfilling your dreams but also coming together as a community. It highlights the struggles of trying to change—both your career and who you are as a person—to better fit what you want and who you want to be. It’s a story about perseverance and paying it forward. Definitely one that’ll have you catching all the warm fuzzies!

Gwen & Art Are Not in Love

Heartstopper meets A Knight’s Tale in this queer medieval rom-com YA debut about love, friendship, and being brave enough to change the course of history.

It’s been hundreds of years since King Arthur’s reign. His descendant, Arthur, a future Lord and general gadabout, has been betrothed to Gwendoline, the quick-witted, short-tempered princess of England, since birth. The only thing they can agree on is that they despise each other.

They’re forced to spend the summer together at Camelot in the run-up to their nuptials, and within 24 hours, Gwen has discovered Arthur kissing a boy, and Arthur has gone digging for Gwen’s childhood diary and found confessions about her crush on the kingdom’s only lady knight, Bridget Leclair.

Realizing they might make better allies than enemies, Gwen and Art make a reluctant pact to cover for each other, and as things heat up at the annual royal tournament, Gwen is swept off her feet by her knight, and Arthur takes an interest in Gwen’s royal brother. Lex Croucher’s Gwen & Art Are Not in Love is chock full of sword-fighting, found family, and romantic shenanigans destined to make readers fall in love.

Gwen and Art were promised to each other upon their births . . . but several years later, it became quite obvious that they hated each other. Now that they’re both of age, their parents decide it’s a great idea to force them to spend the summer together to get to know each other. And they do! So well, in fact, that within 24 hours, Gwen catches Art kissing a boy, and Art digs up Gwen’s old diary and discovers her crush on a lady knight. They decide to table their hate just enough to cover for each other, becoming begrudging allies. And they do fall in love . . . just not with each other.

This book is comped to Heartstopper and A Knight’s Tale, and I do think both of those are true. It’s a very cozy historical romance that combines coming of age with queer discovery and acceptance. There are two separate slow-burn romances, both of them equally charming in their own ways.

You, With A View

Two weeks on the road… stuck in a car with your high-school enemy.

Noelle Shepard is grieving the loss of her beloved grandmother when she discovers decades-old photos and letters that hint to a forbidden love in her gram’s past. Needing to know the full story, she creates a TikTok video appealing for information – and it goes viral.

Through her video, she manages to track down her grandmother’s secret love, Paul, who offers to take her on the honeymoon road-trip he and Gram planned but never got to go on.

Noelle jumps at the chance to make this one last connection with her grandmother. There’s just one problem – Paul’s grandson is Noelle’s frustratingly handsome high-school rival Theo.

And Theo has to come, too.

It’s only two weeks. Surely Noelle can survive that long? But with one car between them – and often only one bed – it doesn’t take long for things to heat up…

When her grandmother dies, upon going through her things, Noelle finds out that her grandmother had a secret first love that she didn’t know about. The desire to know more about her grandmother—and to keep this one little piece of her alive—drives her to turn to social media to find out of this gentleman is still alive and who he is. Miracle upon miracle, she finds a name (Paul) and contact and realizes he’s in the area! Less miraculous is the fact that her high school rival is his grandson. When Noelle decides to go on the honeymoon her grandmother had planned but never taken, Paul agrees to go with her . . . on the condition that his grandson goes, too. It’s only two weeks. How bad can it be . . . right?

This was equal parts romance and self-discovery, almost a quarter-life coming-of-age story, but it’s also a love letter to the people you’ve loved and lost. Noelle’s pain at losing her grandmother and the connections she feels to her in all these small ways is so beautiful and reminded me strongly of my own grandmother. While this is an enemies-to-lovers and the romance actually moves quite fast, I appreciated how realistic the romance was. There are a lot of romance tropes I don’t like, and miscommunication is definitely the top of that list, but I loved the way this book approached it. The struggle wasn’t miscommunication so much as learning how to communicate in a healthy way, which is something I especially appreciated.

Ao Haru Ride

The popular shojo manga series that was adapted into the Blue Spring Ride anime!

In high school, Futaba gets a second chance with her first love, Kou.

Futaba Yoshioka thought all boys were loud and obnoxious until she met Kou Tanaka in junior high. But as soon as she realized she really liked him, he had already moved away because of family issues. Now in high school, she meets Kou again, but is he still the same boy she fell in love with?

Second-chance love amongst high school students. What could possibly be cozier? As a hopeless romantic at heart (and as someone who married her childhood crush), I like to believe that sometimes first loves are a thing . . . just not always when they first occur. Sometimes the timing is just off. Futaba isn’t interested in boys or romance as she enters high school, but when she realizes that one of the new kids looks strikingly familiar, she finds herself dredging up old memories and feelings.

This is definitely a slow burn, will they/won’t they clean romance. The characters go through the typical teenage drama you might expect . . . which, oddly, is still relatable as adults. Turns out, drama is drama. While there is a slight love triangle . . . or rectangle, depending how you look at it, I appreciated how realistically it was done. It subverted the normal trope of a girl just being attracted to two boys and having to choose between them in lieu of trying to make a relationship work and honestly realizing feelings. You know, like teens do. I really appreciated the exploration of budding romance, along with the honest ability to admit when things aren’t working and being able to be friends and move on. Because romance doesn’t always work out, and it’s not usually the end of the world.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold

What would you change if you could go back in time?

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer’s, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?

If you could go back in time for just 15 minutes . . . what would you do? The premise isn’t quite that simple, because as it turns out, time travel has a lot of rules. But that’s the basic gist of this story. It’s all set in one location: a coffee shop that offers the ability to time travel. Just once, though. And only before the coffee gets cold.

As you might imagine, while this is definitely a feel-good read, it’s also very much a tearjerker. Everyone has different reasons for visiting the past, each just as valid as the next. The scenarios were so heartbreakingly relatable and familiar. Even though time travel changes nothing about the timeline, it provides these characters a beautiful sense of closure. This is the first book of a series, all of which are pretty cozy. While the time-travelers change each book, the setting and the main characters are the same, each changing in their own little ways as time goes on.

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

Put the kettle on, there’s a mystery brewing…
Tea-shop owner. Matchmaker. Detective?

Sixty-year-old self-proclaimed tea expert Vera Wong enjoys nothing more than sipping a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy ‘detective’ work on the internet (AKA checking up on her son to see if he’s dating anybody yet).

But when Vera wakes up one morning to find a dead man in the middle of her tea shop, it’s going to take more than a strong Longjing to fix things. Knowing she’ll do a better job than the police possibly could – because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands – Vera decides it’s down to her to catch the killer.

Nobody spills the tea like this amateur sleuth.

You may be thinking to yourself, “How in the world can a mystery where a dead body appears in the very first chapter be like a warm hug?!” And, okay, fair question. But first, if it makes you feel better, the human that dead body formerly used to be was kind of garbage, so do not feel bad for them for even a second. But two, as is so often the case in life, it’s the people who really make this book. Or in this case, the characters.

After the passing of her husband, and given the fact that her son never returns her texts, Vera is lonely. Not that she’d ever admit it. Vera is an extremely frustrating character, but her well-meaning nature easily won me over. There’s something about Vera that attracts people to her. She’s caring, but also fierce and overwhelming . . . despite also being small and fragile. She’s a contradiction. The murder itself is more confusing than it first seems, because, as I said, the victim was garbage. Everyone Vera meets had a reason for wanting the victim dead. Not a whole ton of mourning going on here. Everyone has secrets they’re hiding from each other . . . including Vera. Which makes it a fast-paced, squad-filled delight of a book that is utterly funny (if not slightly absurd).

Northranger

In this swoony and spooky teen summer romance graphic novel set on a Texas ranch, sixteen-year-old Cade Muñoz finds himself falling for the ranch owner’s mysterious and handsome son, only to discover that he may be harboring a dangerous secret.

Cade has always loved to escape into the world of a good horror movie. After all, horror movies are scary—but to Cade, a closeted queer Latino teen growing up in rural Texas—real life can be way scarier.

When Cade is sent to spend the summer working as a ranch hand to help earn extra money for his family, he is horrified. Cade hates everything about the ranch, from the early mornings to the mountains of horse poop he has to clean up. The only silver lining is the company of the two teens who live there—in particular, the ruggedly handsome and enigmatic Henry.

But as unexpected sparks begin to fly between Cade and Henry, things get…complicated. Henry is reluctant to share the details of his mother’s death, and Cade begins to wonder what else he might be hiding. Inspired by the gothic romance of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and perfect for fans of Heartstopper and Bloom comes a modern love story so romantic it’s scary.

Being gay is hard . . . but being gay in Texas is even more so. This book does a great job of presenting a cozy, adorable queer romance between two teens who are still coming to grips with their sexuality. Especially as they’re not entirely sure how the people they love will react. There’s a thread of mystery throughout the plot as Cade learns more about the people he’s working for and the secrets they may be keeping.

At its heart, though, this graphic novel is about self-discovery and self-acceptance. It’s a very cute, clean romance filled with lots of heartwarming family bonds.

A Nobleman’s Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel

Major Rufus d’Aumesty has unexpectedly become the Earl of Oxney, master of a remote Norman manor on the edge of the infamous Romney Marsh. There he’s beset on all sides, his position contested both by his greedy uncle and by Luke Doomsday, son of a notorious smuggling clan.

The earl and the smuggler should be natural enemies, but cocksure, enragingly competent Luke is a trained secretary and expert schemer—exactly the sort of man Rufus needs by his side. Before long, Luke becomes an unexpected ally…and the lover Rufus had never hoped to find.

But Luke came to Stone Manor with an ulterior motive, one he’s desperate to keep hidden even from the lord he can’t resist. As the lies accumulate and family secrets threaten to destroy everything they hold dear, master and man find themselves forced to decide whose side they’re really on…and what they’re willing to do for love.

Technically, this is book two in the Doomsday Books series, and I highly recommend reading book one first. Which is a perfectly solid book. But I thought this second book was far more charming. Just personal preference (my coworker thought the exact opposite!). What I especially appreciated about this one is the slow-burn but intense romance. There’s a lot of pining and so many reasons why they shouldn’t. But Rufus and Luke support each other, recognizing each other’s strengths and bringing out the best in each other. They both bring a lot of baggage to the table that needs to be sorted through, but they’re both doing the best they can.

In the Lives of Puppets

In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees, live three robots–fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, lives there too. They’re a family, hidden and safe.

The day Vic salvages and repairs an unfamiliar android labelled “HAP,” he learns of a shared dark past between Hap and Gio-a past spent hunting humans.

When Hap unwittingly alerts robots from Gio’s former life to their whereabouts, the family is no longer hidden and safe. Gio is captured and taken back to his old laboratory in the City of Electric Dreams. So together, the rest of Vic’s assembled family must journey across an unforgiving and otherworldly country to rescue Gio from decommission, or worse, reprogramming.

Along the way to save Gio, amid conflicted feelings of betrayal and affection for Hap, Vic must decide for himself: Can he accept love with strings attached?

I am convinced that TJ Klune obviously wrote this book just for me, that’s how perfectly it fit into what I needed and wanted from a romance. This is a Pinocchio science fiction retelling, and while the similarities are obvious here and there, the plot is wholly something else. At its heart, this book is an asexual romance where the focus is on family and platonic relationships. There is an absolutely stellar squad that will win your heart, guaranteed. The romance itself is tentative and sweet, more focused on the two forming an emotional bond than anything else.

So This Is Ever After

Carry On meets Arthurian legend in this funny, subversive young adult fantasy about what happens after the chosen one wins the kingdom and has to get married to keep it…and to stay alive.

Arek hadn’t thought much about what would happen after he completed the prophecy that said he was destined to save the Kingdom of Ere from its evil ruler. So now that he’s finally managed to (somewhat clumsily) behead the evil king (turns out magical swords yanked from bogs don’t come pre-sharpened), he and his rag-tag group of quest companions are at a bit of a loss for what to do next.

As a temporary safeguard, Arek’s best friend and mage, Matt, convinces him to assume the throne until the true heir can be rescued from her tower. Except that she’s dead. Now Arek is stuck as king, a role that comes with a magical catch: choose a spouse by your eighteenth birthday, or wither away into nothing.

With his eighteenth birthday only three months away, and only Matt in on the secret, Arek embarks on a desperate bid to find a spouse to save his life—starting with his quest companions. But his attempts at wooing his friends go painfully and hilariously wrong…until he discovers that love might have been in front of him all along.

Have you ever wondered what happens to a hero after they’ve finished the quest, fulfilled the prophecy, and beat the Big Bad? Well, this book attempts to answer that (and the answer is . . . chaos). This is a super cute queer friends-to-lovers romance that hinges on miscommunication in the most adorable way. Both boys are afraid the other doesn’t feel the same, and they’ve been best friends since children, and an unrequited love could easily destroy a friendship that they both value so much.

This book was so unapologetically funny and absurd. Arek is trying so freaking hard to be a good king and also, you know, to find a spouse so he doesn’t die. But all of his brilliant romantic scheming goes horribly wrong. In short, Arek is very bad at wooing. I can relate. The premise is ridiculously fun, and I absolutely loved the squad that Arek builds around him.

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