this is a heartwarming and quirky fantasy about Rottgor, an orc knight who, after centuries of battle, embarks on a new life focused on food, friendship, and fatherhood. Opening a restaurant in the necropolis, Rottgor brings together an unlikely mix of undead and living customers, all while protecting a young orphan named Astra from a dangerous secret. With themes of redemption and the healing power of community, this gentle tale shows how even the darkest past can lead to a brighter future.

Thank you Netgalley for my digital ARC! This was the cosiest read. I enjoyed reading about Razgaif and Astra and so many lovable characters, it became my comfort read before bed, and I will miss it now 🥲

Would be nice to have another book based in Astra’s future 👀

A cozy fantasy about an orc knight with a passion for cooking? Absolutely. This was so wholesome and cozy, like a warm hug.

Let me count the ways for how cozy and wonderful this. From the cover to the content it is absolutely perfect and I can't wait to get a copy for my shelf but also to gift to others.

Recipes for an Unexpected Afterlife has such a fun and unique concept, blending cozy food magic with a surreal, offbeat version of the afterlife. Many chapters offered warmth and comfort, and I loved how the story mixed second chances, found family, and a touch of dark humor without ever getting too heavy.

That said, I did struggle a bit with the execution. The worldbuilding comes at you fast, sometimes feeling like it’s trying to do too much too soon, and the writing could use a bit more focus to really let the best parts shine. Moments that should have landed with big emotional payoffs, like character revelations or important turning points, sometimes breezed by in just a few lines.

Still, there’s so much to like here: from the deadpan banter between Rottgor and Cleo, to the oddly heartwarming idea of a death knight dreaming about opening a restaurant. I especially loved the way food was used not just as comfort, but as memory and emotional healing.

While it ended up being a 3-star read for me, I can absolutely see this hitting home for cozy fantasy readers looking for something quirky, heartfelt, and a little different from the usual. Definitely worth adding to your TBR if you love stories about second chances/found family, weird little afterlives, and the magic of a really good meal.

What a beautiful cozy story this was. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this one. The premise is unique and a bit darker than I anticipated going in. The use of necromancer enslavement for Rottgor was quite the setup for his internal struggles and growth. I thought the setup for the journey was done really well. However, I will say, the pacing after initially getting the restaurant lagged a bit. Rott’s internal struggle with being good enough to chase his own dream was understandable but it felt like it held up the forward momentum a bit too much in the first 33% of the book. After about 40% through though, the pacing righted itself and was pretty well done to the end.

The characters were all quite fun and full of life. My only qualm would be that when they were introduced, it was done all at once and it hindered my ability to distinguish them in the early days of their relationships with the Afterlife. Once they were more well established though, they stood out and became lively and lovely too. Astra and Thess were fantastic the whole way through. The way that the author built up Thess through Astra and then ultimately revealed her to be a badass protector was one of my favorite things.

The food descriptions were wonderful and made my stomach growl a couple of times, and the sheer number of life quotes that can be pulled from this book is astounding.

My one main note would be that this needs another run of editing because there were some obvious grammatical errors. Particularly in the first 25% and the last 15% of the book.

I really really enjoyed this one. Thank you for the ARC. Can’t wait for this story to come out.

Thank you for the early copy! I really liked the premise of this book and was excited for this story, but ultimately it wasn’t for me. I felt there was too much world building to keep with that cozy atmosphere and the beginning especially was very dense and intense. I really wanted to love this.

This is what cozy book dreams are made of. Recipes of an Unexpected Afterlife had it all. Highly recommend.

2.5 rounded up.

An undead Orc who was once a warrior for an evil ruler has decided to indulge is love of cooking and open restaurant after being given a second chance at life. Who doesn’t enjoy a cozy fantasy from time to time. So this story idea is very interesting but execution was not all there. There are some plot holes like Calfe dedication to Rottgor after only one meeting? Seems like more could be done here. Where is the relationship building? I mean there seem to be almost no relationship building at all. We learned more about the design of the restaurant and the food then we learn about the characters relationships. To me a good cozy fantasy needs to have amazing relationship building to keep my interest. I mean the character interactions and found family are what make the story cozy.

A wonderful slice of life book that was reminiscent of "Legends & Lattes".
From the first page, I was easily absorbed into the book

I love a cozy fantasy book so when I saw the description of this one I knew it would be my type of book, it’s wholesome and has such a unique setting, my only problem lies in the characters relationship building, i didn’t really see the connection between them besides Astra, I also wish the world building and characters descriptions were stronger because I had a hard time visualizing them.

I thought I would love this book, it had everything to make me happy: food, cosiness, found family, a well-built fantasy world... I was excited to start.
But this just didn't land with me.
There are things I liked. The problem of the hero, who doesn't know what to do with himself after centuries of servitude, is very intriguing. How he has to rediscover himself is really interesting and we root for him.
But I felt like his journey to rediscover himself was brushed too quickly, there was no tension in it.

The friendships were all instantaneous and the big one with Calfe made no sense to me as there was no real exchange; Calfe just kept on giving freely, despite introducing himself as a business man helping the hero so as to help himself. Often I felt like what side characters said or how they were talked about just didn't match what they did.

The whole orphan thing also demanded I suspend my belief too much. They are described as poor, but also having the best education and care, and at the same time they don't have enough food and are left to roam the city almost any way they want, including after nightfall.

The way the place is described as the safest city, but everyone is expecting violence to happen, and it does, that just felt so weird to me. And I guess all that impacted my immersion in the story.

I think players of Dungeons and Dragons will like it, or anyone looking for high fantasy at peace (during that downtime away from the questing).

A story centred on love: love of food, friends and family.
A host of charming, unusual characters, all playing their part in this warm and sometimes humorous fantasy.
Deston J Munden has created a city with many layers and peopled with many different personalities and set his story of Rottgor and Astra within that city.
It is, ultimately a story of an orc finding his way back to life despite being, well technically, dead, Along his path to restoration, Rottgor learns to love , protect , and finally to adopt a little orphaned girl, Astra. Astra, of course, is no ordinary orphan but to say much more would give too much of the plot away.
Suffice to say that this warm hearted book is a real pleasure to read and I was left hoping that peace would continue to reign in the wonderfully named Afterlife Crisis tavern and that its recipes will continue to delight its many and varied customers for years to come.

This was such a fun and cozy read — exactly what I was in the mood for. If you love immersive world-building and characters that jump off the page, this one’s for you. Everything felt so vivid and natural, like the world just built itself around me while I read.

There’s also a really cool layer of political tension between the living and the undead, which added depth without losing that cozy fantasy charm.

Honestly, the whole thing was just a delight. I didn’t want it to end.

Big thanks to NetGalley and Bindery Books/Cozy Quill for the early copy!

I think I need to get the physical completed version since there is a complex world within this cozy fantasy. I also need to be in the mood for a cozy fantasy, and right now I am wanting a less complex world with less world building. Since this book is not set to publish until October I may end up coming back to this one, but I can already tell I am going to want the full physical book experience with this one. I want to add it to my shelf!

I heavily enjoyed this read, but struggled to keep up with what was happening simply due to being tired and it being a digital book I think, as I enjoyed the writing style.

Thank you so much for allowing me to read this eARC for free! I appreciate the opportunity to leave honest feedback voluntarily.

This is a cute little cozy fantasy. An undead (previously deceased?) orc is retired from his service and finds himself living among the general population with nothing to do. He makes friends and starts a restaurant. The local, living, population give him trouble and the plot escalates from there. I enjoyed it, though there wasn't anything overly new about it, but I was entertained, which is sometimes the entire point.

Recipes for an Unexpected Afterlife has a really compelling concept at its core—one that blends cosy, emotional food magic with the dark absurdity of life as a death knight. The contrast between the warmth of chapter one and the shifting, surreal circumstances that follow is genuinely striking, and I think there’s real potential here for something special.

However, I did struggle with the execution. The writing itself could use some refinement. While I appreciate the ambition behind the worldbuilding, it felt overwhelming—almost like everything needed to be established all at once, which made the first few chapters feel cluttered and overly descriptive. The use of adjectives and overly flowery language occasionally gave the prose a more juvenile tone than the story seemed to aim for.

Dialogue-wise, the relationships didn’t always feel believable. If characters are meant to be close or share platonic intimacy, referring to each other constantly by formal titles undercuts that dynamic and makes interactions feel stilted. There’s also some reliance on familiar fantasy tropes and naming conventions, which made the story feel less original in places, despite the strong premise.

Ultimately, I only made it about 30% through before I found the writing was getting in the way of my enjoyment. That said, I’d genuinely love to see this book again in a later draft. The energy of the opening chapter and the snarky dynamic between Rottogor and Cleo were real highlights—I hope the author leans more into that voice and emotional core, because it’s where the story shines brightest.

I will not share a review on my stories as I appreciate the opportunity to read the unproofed draft and appreciate that there is work still to be done

This was such a feel good and cozy book! I absolutely loved reading the character development and the all the different characters. I do wish that some of the characters were better described since I had trouble visualising some of the characters.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and will post my review once its published!

Thanks to Netgalley for this ARC.

4 ⭐️ Everything about this book appealed to me. the cover, the blurb, the character names, EVERYTHING. And I wasn't disappointed.

If you crave a cosy fantasy, i can recommend this. The wordl building, setting, and magic system woven into this story is so well done that they come to life so easily when reading. The overall story Is heartfelt with just a little comedy. This book felt like it warmed my soul.

Legends and Lattes meets The House in the Cerulean Sea meets D&D lore in this cozy fantasy novel. Rottgor, an undead orc with a heroic background, is finally retiring. As he reconnects with his previous life he finds joy in the community around him, and in cooking! In the Necropolis, however, there are those who believe the undead have no place in their city and will do anything to keep them out.

This book continued to get stronger and stronger all the way to the end. In the beginning, I felt that the story dragged and was having a hard time keeping my interest, but as soon as more characters began to be introduced I was much more invested. My favorite aspect of this novel was the found family. I enjoyed every second we spent learning about their personalities and enjoying the time they spent together. I do wish that more time had been spent developing these relationships. A few times, especially at the beginning of the novel or when the characters were first meeting, I felt that relationships made huge leaps in a very short period. For example, characters would be standoffish or unsure of the other, and in the next sentence, they were teasing each other, with no apparent change in the situation between those two lines.

I do feel that this novel could use a pretty heavy round of editing. As mentioned before, the pacing was sometimes off, with too much time being spent in some places and not enough time spent on important moments (Lady Cleo revealing Rottgor's new rune, Rottgor deciding he really could open a restaurant while shopping at the market). These moments felt as though they were intended to land with much more impact, but ultimately fell flat with only a paragraph being spent on them. There were also sentences in first person POV scattered throughout the novel (the novel being written primarily in third person POV), which pulled me out of the book. These could have been fixed simply by adding "Rottgor thought to himself" before or after the sentence.

I had a lovely time reading Recipes for an Unexpected Afterlife. The depth of the world was interesting, the characters loveable, and the food descriptions mouth-watering. I think this book could be fantastic with a strong edit to tighten things up!

Thank you to NetGalley and Bindery Books/Cozy Quill for the eARC in exchange for an honest review!