Tea you at the altar A cozy fantasy stocked with secrets and love

The third entry in Thorne's Tea and Tomes Quartet (after A Pilot's Life for Tea, 2023) revisits Kianthe and Reyna as they plan a wedding, plot a coup, and try to keep baby dragons off their roof. But the chaos of missing heirs, dashing pirates, and scheming queens swirls around the earnest stability of Kianthe and Reyna's relationship. The pair must deal with wedding anxieties both mundane (meeting your partner's parents for the first time) and unusual (investigating a murder in a different country days before the ceremony). At its core, this story is about love, whether familial, comradely, or romantic, and its ability to overcome the most power hungry of opponents. The story ends on a sudden note guaranteed to leave fans breathless for the conclusion of the series. That shock is mitigated somewhat by the inclusion of a postepilogue tale of a mythical storm causing fish to be caught by accident. Lovers of cozy fantasies will delight in this follow-up, a romp easily enjoyed in a comfy chair while drinking its eponymous tea.

Between running their tea shop and taking care of baby dragons and a griffon, Kianthe and Reyna (the Mage of Ages and an ex-Queen's guard) are also planning their wedding. This cozy sapphic fantasy could have left it at that, but Thorne moves the plot into even more intriguing spaces as the wedding becomes a lure to the destabilizing and power-hungry Queen Tilaine, her possible replacement, and many cross-connecting threads from the previous books in the "Tomes & Tea" series. Notable for the ease of her banter-filled dialogue, the speed yet gentle ease of her plots, and the convivial and warm atmosphere she layers into her stories, Thorne does a wonderful job here widening the cast and deepening the stakes. There is a pretender to the queendom, a mysterious death among the queen's guard, a new connection to Dastardly Pirate Dreggs, and family to meet and struggle to win over. Start at the beginning of the series. VERDICT These charming novels model an emotionally resonant, deeply fun, and intelligent relationship.--Neal Wyatt