Legends and Lattes, by Travis Baldree

So I now have a name for this genre of fantasy--cozy fantasy. I have read things like it but didn't have a name.

Other reviewers have said it quite well--this is a very comfortable and comforting book, nothing challenging, all plot twists fully anticipated. Warm, likeable characters except for the few obvious villains. The romance is lesbian, which is by now not challenging either. The restaurant the retired adventurer Viv builds works its way up from an abandoned livery to a lively coffee bar, with the help of unlikely and oppressed employees with underappreciated talents When disaster strikes and it is burned down Viv has enough social credit to build it back better than ever. This is not a spoiler because there cannot be spoilers for this story.

Two questions arise:

1) Why is this so incredibly popular? I get that. There's always a large audience for stories that are comforting and not challenging, and our times are so incredibly scary that there's simply no more room for dystopias. Those are all coming true. Now we want escape.

2) Why is this nominated for so many awards? This is a harder one. It's a writing exercise that got popular, not unlike Andy Weir's The Martian, but a whole lot of research and effort went into that work of fiction. I've been playing with ChatGPT and it isn't quite up to writing Legends & Lattes yet, but we're maybe six months away. It is a well crafted story but there's not enough to it to justify the buzz.

A fatigue nomination maybe? Award committees are simply worn out with reading challenging, sound-the-alarm material and sorting out its merits? I would understand, I'm feeling that too. All the same, there is a good argument for critical acclaim to be different from popularity. Critics need to stake out a space to lift up difficult, experimental, or provocative work. In these times that's been lifting up stories of and by marginalized groups. Legends and Lattes will still manage to get banned by our latest round of conservative Christian bluenoses because it does not suit their reading of the Bible. Some might say that's enough. But there are still important stories to be told, and lightweight fantasy/romance novels don't need critical attention in order to get readers' attention.

My Goodreads Review