enne📚 reviewed Pirate's Life for Tea by Rebecca Thorne
A Pirate's Life for Tea
3 stars
A Pirate's Life for Tea is book two in an ongoing cozy fantasy romance series. I had a lot of fun with the first book, but this one worked less well for me.
Having the perspective of the book continue to be from Reyna and Kianthe's perspective blunted the dynamic between Serena and Bobbie, especially with Reyna and Kianthe wink-winking at each other (and the audience) about their matchmaking schemes. Overall, this sequel felt a little too cozy for my tastes--nothing really had teeth in the same way that the first book did, and all of the new characters felt instantly either on side or not. Bobbie seemed like the only character who had any growth.
This sounds like I'm being quite negative, but it was fun to revisit this world and its puns and real-feeling relationships. I am looking forward to the next (final?) book as it will likely …
A Pirate's Life for Tea is book two in an ongoing cozy fantasy romance series. I had a lot of fun with the first book, but this one worked less well for me.
Having the perspective of the book continue to be from Reyna and Kianthe's perspective blunted the dynamic between Serena and Bobbie, especially with Reyna and Kianthe wink-winking at each other (and the audience) about their matchmaking schemes. Overall, this sequel felt a little too cozy for my tastes--nothing really had teeth in the same way that the first book did, and all of the new characters felt instantly either on side or not. Bobbie seemed like the only character who had any growth.
This sounds like I'm being quite negative, but it was fun to revisit this world and its puns and real-feeling relationships. I am looking forward to the next (final?) book as it will likely be a collision of characters who have mostly been off page, and also because it will likely come back to focus on Reyna and Kianthe again (and their wedding).
(This is also a petty side complaint, but Bobbie is a cop [sorry, a constable]; even if the book argues that you can't change things from the inside, it still ends with some "bad apple" theory that I could have done without. Mostly, there's some feeling that I could do without such direct cop analogues in my cozy fiction.)