Thank you Berkley Publishing Group and NetGalley for this ARC!

What a heartwarming debut novel by Julie Leong! This cozy story features found family, a little magic, and lots of adventure. While the coziness of this story is akin to Legends & Lattes or A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Leong doesn’t shy away from intertwining heavier topics into the story. These characters battle with grief, belonging, and political turmoil alongside their laughs, friendship, and antics. The pacing is on the slower side, but I felt it fit the vibe of this cozy fantasy! I also really loved the writing- lots of details that made me feel like I was inside the world with Tao. If you want a low stakes story that leaves you with a warm, fuzzy feeling, then this book is for you!

Thanks, again, Berkley & NetGalley for this ARC!

The Teller of Small Fortunes was a fun and magical read about a Fortune Teller who finds herself on an adventure with an ex-mercenary, a thief and a baker on a quest to find the ex-mercenary’s missing daughter.

This book was a nice cozy read for the autumnal season and I really enjoyed the themes of new beginnings and found family. I was so happy that after years of feeling like she didn’t belong that Tao was able to find her place in the world and also that she found true friends for the first time in her life.

All in all this was an enjoyable read.

This book was so sweet and so heartwarming. I adored all of the characters, including the animals. There’s a little bit of a mystery involved, so it’s a tad higher stakes, but still oh so cozy. I loved the magical elements to it too, but nothing crazy. Such a wonderful little fantasy read.

What an original story. I loved that Leong creates characters of diverse nationality and race that in many ways mimic our world. The characters are very interesting and develop nicely over the course of the story. A heroine who doesn't feel she fits in. Characters who don't know their own strengths. A search for a little girl that takes the group through a lot of difficult situations. All make the book a really engaging read.

Leong creates a very intriguing world where good and bad are sometimes obvious but more often not easily identified. Leong is so scarred by her father's death and afraid of her own talent. She's kept her fortunes small as well as herself. Large might hurt her and others. Large is to be feared. Part of the smallness is aloneness. She struck out on her own very young. Despite the very real danger, she continues to travel alone. Until one day she picks up accidental companions who open up a whole new world. Now she's traveling with a group, she's making great.friendships, she even allows herself to make a meaningful fortune not knowing yet how it'll help somewhat ease a father's great fears. She returns to the city her stepfather brought her that she never wanted to see again just to help her new friends. Group over self, She and the group take on frightening battles, make news foes and new allies. All is not what it seems and it's exciting to find out what the truths are.

I throughly enjoyed this book and recommend it.

Thanks to the author, ACE publishing and NetGalley for the ARC.

A nice cozy read that is low stakes and enjoyable! There is just enough world building and the quirky characters are so easy to like. If you are fan of Can't spell Treason without Tea then this would be nice next read!

This cozy fantasy story just came out and it arrived at a really perfect time for anyone who is feeling stressed after the election and needs some gentle escapist reading. In the wake of her father’s death Tao and her mother fled their homeland when Tao was just a child. But despite being raised by a wealthy stepfather, she could never quite escape her darker skin and hair that marked her as ‘Other’. With her mother unable to move past the grief of her loss, Tao was left alone in a hostile world.

She left the safety of wealth for a life on the road, passing herself off as a Teller of Small Fortunes. On her travels she meets a host of other travelers and they become a lovely little found family, one of my favorite tropes. They bond over their shared pains and as they search the country for one lost little girl, they come together and become more than the sum of their parts.

The story has a little bit of the flavor of Psalm for the Wild-Built, they travel in wagons and set up in towns along the road offering baked goods and fortunes. It made me think of Dex’s tea monk ministry. There are some elevated stakes, but never so much that it made me truly worried. This cozy fantasy is well balanced and as you’d expect for the genre, things work themselves out.
Also there is an opinionated cat that travels with them.

Read This If You - crazy a cozy fantasy story with an adorable found family, need a happy ending.

This is the COZIEST of cozy fantasies!!!  I don’t even like cozy fantasy, and I thought this was wonderful.  It’s got everything: found family, a quest for a missing daughter, a traveling fortune teller, magic, misshapen scones, a beloved mule, a phoenix,  a cat who may or may not be magical, and a very happy ending.  I highly recommend this to anyone looking to escape the world and  sink into a happy fantasy that gently carries you along  like a lazy river.  There is a strong story arc that keeps the reader engaged, but it is low stakes, there are no HUGE surprises, and nothing bad will happen.  There is plot tension, and there are a few tense scenes, but you can read with confidence, because everything always works out.   No one lies, there are no big deceptions, only small deceptions, to go along with the small fortunes.

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the free review copy.

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4.5⭐, a wonderfully enjoyable cozy fantasy with only a few bumps in the road.

I found this to be a perfect little "curl up by the fire with your fur baby and a cup of cocoa" type of book, and I'm looking forward to more titles from Julie Leong.

The characters in this story are, even in-universe, pushed into D&D-like tropes. There's Tao, the mage, who is actually a Seer with very powerful magic, but she refuses to use it for anything more than small fortunes due to trauma in her past. There's Mash, the warrior, who is searching for his missing daughter, and Silt, his best friend and companion, a slightly reformed thieving rogue. And finally, Kina, the baker, who I'm convinced might actually have magic of her own. Joining them are Lahou, the mule, and Fidelitus, the cat whose gender no one bothered to check.

On the surface, this is a rather sweet story about finding home in friendships and making home where you feel loved, but underneath there's an undercurrent of discomforting dread? Which is hard to parse with the "cozy" tagline. The two countries in this story, Eshtera and Shinara, which represent Europe and China, are on the brink of war with each other, and Tao, as a Shinn woman, experiences racism on her travels across Eshtera. Mash's daughter, a very young girl, is thought to have been kidnapped by bandits and held captive for months. The threat of the mages on Tao's tail, hunting her for her magical power, also contributes to the pangs of unease. So, maybe the stakes are low, as they don't greatly affect the main characters, but they're still a great trouble on the horizon.

I found it a bit odd that Kina, the Eshteran baker, is the one to come up with the idea for fortune cookies. I didn't like the gender mixup with Fidelitus, the cat. I knew it was coming from the very beginning of the cat's introduction, and it seemed like a silly way to hide a plot reveal. I also didn't really love how queerness was portrayed in this story. One of the only queer characters who gets dialogue is a woman who has no interest in wedding a man and Tao sends her off to an all-girls nunnery. But their entire conversation is had in hushed tones and kept secretive, and no other queer characters appear. I'm not a fan of "cozy fantasy" where the setting isn't queernormative, because then can it really be cozy if there's the inherent worry of homophobia? This wasn't really explicitly one or the other but I would have appreciated less smoke and mirrors. I wish more time was devoted to Tao's practice of fortune telling and the expansion of her's, Kina's, and Mash and Silt's travelling professions.

Overall, it's another cozy fantasy that compares itself to Legends & Lattes and does a good job standing on its own, but you do have to be careful putting yourself up next to the number one cozy fantasy of the last decade.

"Theres no such things as greater good-there's just good, and the more of it we can do, the better."

This was a very cute and cozy read.

My thanks to NetGalley for making an eARC of this book available for me.

This was a sweet book about a young woman who unintentionally acquires traveling companions and helps each of them overcome problems in their respective lives. In the process she also manages to make progress in making peace with her own troubled past.

This book was amazing. I loved the found family at the same time as reconciliation. You can read this book as a light-ish pallet cleanser, or as a conversation about politics and ethics. This is a book that felt like a Hiyao Miyazaki film.

Tao ran away from home and from the Guild. She hides her magic by traveling constantly, and telling small fortunes. But even a small fortune can change a life, and she finds herself on the road with friends searching for a treasure.

Why I started this book: Requested this book from NetGalley because of its cover. And I started reading this book because I needed a cozy fantasy in my life right now.

Why I finished it: Easily finished it in two days because even when I picked it up to just read a couple of pages, I found myself reading larger chunks. This book is a warm hug and a small adventure.

The Teller of Small Fortunes is a cozy, lighthearted fantasy novel that helped carry me through this past week. The story follows Tao, a traveling fortune teller who sets out on a quest of self-discovery and finds family and adventure where she least expects it. I loved the variety of characters in the story, especially those in Tao’s immediate circle. We have Mash, the cinnamon roll warrior searching for his missing daughter, Silt, the comical ex-thief trying to stay on the right path, and Kina, the amateur baker with a heart of gold. All together, these unforgettable characters make up the heart and soul of the story. There are epic caravan adventures, delicious baked goods, adorable animal companions, and plenty of heartwarming moments. If you’re in need of some comfort, I highly recommend you pick this one up!

This was a cozy fantasy story filled with an adventure quest, magic and tea. I really enjoyed the world building and magical beasts as they searched for a child. Overall a fun fantasy to get lost in.

This was so cozy and cute! Perfect for fans of the Irregular Society of Witches, this little book was the best fall read. All I needed was a warm cup of tea or hot chocolate in hand. I loved every page of this, and couldn't help but be transported to this magical world.

Enjoyed this cozy fantasy - took me awhile to get into the book, but the characters and found family were heartwarming. Everything wraps up neatly, too. Tao is a fortune teller, running from her family and feeling quite isolated. When a tree in the road stops her progress, she is helped by two men - Mash and Stilt. When she tells Mash what she believes is a simple fortune, she finds out his daughter is missing, and the trio decide to band together. In a nearby town, they take on a baker, who makes delicious but unattractive baked goods, and the foursome continue to journey on in search of Mash's daughter. When the government of Eshtera commands Tao to tell large prophecies as a Guild Seer, and takes her from her friends, the adventure begins. Very clean and wholesome, too, if that is what you are looking for.

THE TELLER OF SMALL FORTUNES by Julie Leong is a cozy fantasy debut that was chosen for the LibraryReads November 2024 list. Its beautiful cover reflects the warmth and good cheer which radiates from this story. Tao, a young girl travelling on her own is the title character. As she moves from village to town, she shares small fortunes with others, afraid to fully exercise her ability to foresee the future because of a past tragedy. It is on the road that she meets Mash, a former soldier looking for his lost daughter; Silt, a reformed thief and friend to Mash; and Kina, an apprentice baker. Together this unlikely group forms a community of sorts and their subsequent – sometimes dangerous – adventures bind them tightly together. This is a wonderful story about friendship and (found) family. Here is a favorite quote: "Aye, our lives are short and shaped by circumstance, and maybe we can't control most of what's to come. But we can control how we feel. We can savor the sweetness of a blackberry scone, and the company of our friends, and the warmth of the summer wind at night, and be grateful for it."

In its starred review, Library Journal said, THE TELLER OF SMALL FORTUNES "is a delightful cozy fantasy that will appeal to fans of Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree and A Pirate's Life for Tea by Rebecca Thorne." Enjoy!! Discussion questions are included.

Tao lives a solitary nomadic life brought on by the pain and rejection of her childhood, when she meets a band of new and unlikely friends on the road. This is a cozy fantasy that is very easy to read, pleasant, and endearing. No risk of stress or triggers in this one - just a good “palate cleanser” full of likable characters and a reprieve from darker books. It was a nice change of pace for me, and a sweet story with enough feeling and mystery to propel the plot.

This ended up being one of those books that was a right time, right book kind of situation. I just really needed something that felt full of hope and love, and I definitely got that with this book! I loved following Tao's story and watching her find people to surround herself with. There's definitely a lot of very timely topics discussed here as Tao faces a lot of racism, but the way those around her support her and treat her no differently than they would anyone else was nice to see. It's a low stakes cozy fantasy with found family and a little bit of a quest, and while we didn't go too deep into any of the side characters, I found that I didn't really mind that at all. I think if you're a fan of cozy fantasy then this will definitely be one to check out, it was so cute!

This is definitely different from my typical read but the beautiful cover and description caught my attention. This is a vibrant, beautiful debut that reads like Ghibli studio animation. This book gave me such good warm vibes with so much comfort and obviously the cat companion instantly had me. Tao (the main protagonist) goes from town to town telling people fortunes, some were happy to greet her, some not so much in fact after one “small” fortune, she’s roped into an adventure to find a missing kid with a ragtag group of four people. and a cat. Now that I think about it, this gave me Wizard of Oz feels as we are literally just picking up random people along the way. It’s truly a merry little band of misfits and I adored it. Now it was still slow paced, but as I mentioned before in previous videos, slow paced does not mean a bad book. For some reason labeling a book with that description means ew, it’s bad for a lot of people. Understandable so as the human attention span can only handle so much these days. But in my opinion no, not even in the slightest is it bad and I think it fit the low-stakes coziness within the pages. If you like found family, I really enjoyed that element to the book. Tao’s character development was my favorite part of the story. The book also touches on the struggles of identity and explores Tao’s immigrant experience. This is a low stakes, cozy adventure fantasy. Great for this time of year.