If you want a quiet book with a great setting, side characters and just warm, cozy feelings than look no further. In the first book, I was invested in Viv building a life for herself, but in this one, I knew she wasn't going to stay so I didn't care as much about her relationships that she was forming. Some bittersweetness is inevitable, but Baldree reminds us that the past - even our mistakes - is the fertile soil where we plant the seeds of a beautiful future - C. Baldree creates an imaginative and fully-developed world, "peopled" with rich, warm, likeable characters.

I could have done without the necromancer bits but they don't detract from the "cozy" narrative that is at the heart of the novel. Maybe Val will be the one to introduce the indoor mall to the world after acquiring a gigantic abandoned palace she can't afford to maintain for her own. Thank you to NetGalley, Travis Baldree, and Macmillan Audio for graciously sending me the audiobook to review. What follows is an adorable story of Val being slowly educated in the value of reading for entertainment.Viv is sent to a sleepy beachside town to recover after an injury and she learns to love the town and also, books. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Viv has been hunting down Varine the necromancer with her Ravens crew when she unfortunately gets injured. As before, this is an LGBT friendly novel with Val's status as a lesbian recognized even if her canon romance hasn't shown up yet.

She also finds a little mystery to solve after a man in gray appears in town and makes people uneasy.I don't know if I can explain it, but watching you read what I give you, putting a book in your hands and seeing what happens to you once you put it back down . Nothing of significance happens other than a few sightings of the mystery man in gray, a possible romance brewing, and Viv's new-found love of books.

It took me a little while to become invested in this story, but once I did I couldn't leave this wonderfully crafted world.decidedly warm and cozy" despite the "hint of danger in the wind," summing up the story as "[w]arm and wonderful. nerdy niche bonus: gloomstalker ranger 5, assassin rogue 4, battlemaster fighter 3 is so strong + reminds me of the stealth archer build in skyrim. This is a low-stakes fantasy that delivers exactly what's advertised: a wholesome, cozy novel that feels like a warm hug. It attaches a fascinating history to her as each person she comes across in Murk changes her, some only in little ways, others in big ones.