this book was very out of my comfort zone! a book whose sole goal is to be warm & cozy? a foreign concept to me, seeing as my favourite book is battle royale by koushun takami, but this was quite nice to dip my toes into the relaxing genre.
i will say, my major "issue" with this book is the amount of exposition needed that doesn't exist. im sorry because i had no idea what was going on lore-wise, i had no idea how to envision certain characters such as amity, cal, or thimble. granted, this could be a skill issue on my end! but it did still affect my reading experience negatively :(
i will also say viv felt incredibly one-dimensional, as did most other characters. i understand a book can have many minor characters and not suffer, but i felt like in this book it did. every time i was introduced to a recurring character i hadn't read about in a while i either had to flip back throughout the book or use good ol trusty google. my brain is too small to comprehend the vast amount of characters.
i will say tho this book was quite nice! i did enjoy not shitting my pants because the stakes werent so ridiculously high! i also loved that the

complete minuscule of conflict present was so anticlimactic!!!! lowkey i got a bit mad when some drama was starting because i was like 'wtf this is a cozy book'.... but then! the conflict! went nowhere! /pos

i will also say the pleasant edition of tandri & viv's relationship was enjoyed on my end!!!

also the random yet understandable sapphic relationship???? SIGN MY ASS UP!

honestly tho i think the main reasons i couldn't get into this book were because i had no idea wtf was going on! i had no idea about the universe! like i was wondering quite often if this was like. a sequel. like you cant tell me this book is a stand alone (if this book did have required supplemental reading that i didn't do i will kick myself so bad im so serious)
also i know i praised the book above for its relaxing atmosphere but. i got bored. like sure i would want to read it when i picked it up but.... because there were no stakes i wasn't prompted to pick up the book that often. like ok when the only stakes are if they get customers....... i got bored. this sounds so incredibly dismissive of baldree's writing and i don't mean it to be! i think this is just me learning that i need my books to have tension or else my little rat brain starts begging to read an incredibly fast-paced adventure story. 
um i think i will defo read the little short story "pages to fill" as my edition has that at the end but.... i don't know if ill be reading the prequel sadly :/ only time will tell though!