Here's the thing though: this review is extremely accurate but misses the main reason why Legends and Lattes is so damn boring. This book is a LitRPG. And this is not speculation on my part. Travis Baldree is primarily known for being the audiobook narrator of approximately a gazillion LitRPGs, and decided to try his hand at writing his own book, but a ~cozy~ one. (This also explains why the book suddenly became mega-popular - he already had a base of people who loved his work and wanted to support his new project).
"What the fuck is a LitRPG?" you are probably asking. It stands for Literary Role-Playing Game, and a very niche genre of speculative fiction that is almost entirely self-published web novels. (no shade to self-published web novels!) Basically, these are books where a game system of gaining experience, leveling up, skill trees, etc. is a core element of how the fantasy/sci-fi world functions. I don't mean that the characters necessarily live inside a literal video game, although some LitRPGs do involve the protagonists being isekai'd into one. It could just be a fantasy world where numbers are assigned to people's power levels and everybody is inherently aware of these numbers, and there is a quantifiable amount of mana/experience/whatever it takes to become more powerful and learn new magic spells or skills.
LitRPGs often overlap with another niche genre called progression fantasy, which are stories where the main plot arc is the protagonist gaining more power. Character development is often not really important in LitRPGs/progression fantasy. I'm not saying they can't be well-written, or that people don't care about the characters, but the primary reason people are reading them is because it's sick as hell when Lindon McProtagonist gains enough mana that his demon void hand can suck out other people's life energy and kill them to death. (I realize this sounds dismissive but this is actually from a series that I read and enjoyed and I gotta tell you, it was sick as hell).
Thank you for sticking with me this far, because now we come to the central question: what if a LitRPG, unfortunately saddled with extremely bland characters as they often are, was not about the protagonist accumulating enough sick-as-hell power and magic abilities in order to kick god's ass, but was about... running a coffee shop? What if, upon "leveling up," the protagonist did not unlock Aura Blast of 1,000 Demon Foxes, but unlocked.... scones? (yes, the CONSTANT repetition of the entire fucking text of the coffeeshop menu every time they add a new item is in fact a LitRPG genre staple. It's the level-up screen!) Well my friend, you have Legends and Lattes, a book with all of the flaws of the LitRPG genre and none of the things that make it cool, such as "magic powers" or "literally any conflict at all."
thank you for coming to my TED talk, please give Going Postal by Terry Pratchett a try if you would like to read a good and interesting version of "fantasy protagonist invents thing from modern world" or Unsouled by Will Wight if you are for some mystifying reason now interested in reading a real LitRPG.
