Did not finish at 19%.

I received this audiobook as an advanced reader copy and I was disappointed to not like it.

I've been following the author on TikTok and it's been interesting to her about her journey. I didn't like the cover she chose, so I kept putting off reading the book. But, then I saw that there was an audiobook ARC and I thought, "yay... I can listen".

Sadly, I am SO BORED. And my eyes are tired from rolling them.

This starts off with pretty high stakes with one of the main characters getting stabbed and kinda held as a hostage. The queen, her employer, doesn't stand up for our brave (but stupid) heroine and the heroine is so butt hurt she decides to run away with her mage lover to start a bookstore and a teashop. Here are some of my endless issues with this book just from this first scene.

1. The heroine is supposedly a badass guard to the queen and somehow she not only doesn't avoid being stabbed by an amateur, she also gets held hostage by another amateur!? Not a great start for a badass.

2. The heroine gets butt hurt over her queen not giving a crap about her being held hostage. Uh. I wouldn't expect ANY one to express concern like it seems like she's looking for from an "evil" queen. Who is going to say, "oh, you're holding my guard hostage. What can I do to save her?" No. You're going to pretend you don't give a crap and then make sure that someone is creeping up to take that person out. Also, you trust your guard to deal with an assailant cause THAT'S HER JOB!

Then, our brave heroine runs away and gets attacked by bandits (which we don't get shown, just told) and she gets hurt some more.

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There were so many other eyerolling things,

3. they get a deed to a property with absolutely no issues . It takes a 5-min convo and "there you go. you're the new owners".
4. they claim a space that supposedly was the bandits' and no one bats an eye nor do they have any issues renovating in 30 min time with magic.
5. the author is setting this in a semi-medieval setting but is inconsistent in using modern or older terms. for instance, they are "girlfriends" and have been "dating".. Or they are hiring "contractors".

There are more things that annoyed me but other reviewers captured that stuff better than me.

5 ⭐️

One of my favourite books! I loved that the narrator did different voices for the characters, and how she added emotion into the words.

Legends & Lattes but with tea was a very positive way to market this book. Perhaps, without the comparison I would have enjoyed it more? There are aspects that I would recommend this to others on the basis of, such as the light romance piece, or having a smaller amount of world-building compared to some fantasies, but I don't see this one as something I will be raving about or suggesting unconditionally.