Okay I acknowledge that the whole point of this book was to be cozy, easy to read, and stakes that weren't stressful or world-changing. To me, if a book is going to be cozy in terms of plot, then the intimate relationships and character development need to be excellent. I just didn't feel that here. I liked some of the usage of tropes and how the author took stereotypical characters and flipped them around, but I felt like that was a sort of lazy way to develop the characters. The issues that the main characters struggle with, especially Viv trying to leave behind her life of blood hunting and violence, wasn't explored deeply enough for me. I didn't feel like I was close enough to Viv to understand her internal struggle and she didn't seem to struggle really at all.

On top of that, I felt like the world-building was pretty shallow and I didn't feel incredibly immersed. At first I was impressed because the author explained away modern technology using gnomish engineering which is genius, but everything became explained by gnomish engineering so it didn't have the same impact by the end of the book. I mean like we have magic and arcane powers, I think we could have used more than just gnomish engineering to explain things in a fantasy setting. We also spent the entirety of the book at the coffee shop so the world felt tiny, which I get is for the cozy feeling but I don't feel like it did its job the way it was intended to. It felt like things got explained away too easily and the main conflicts in the story got resolved unrealistically. Maybe that was the author's intention but I didn't like it.

Because of the lack of plot and the less-than-stellar characterization, I felt like this book dragged on despite it being super short and easy to get through. If I were rating it solely on vibes and aesthetic, I would give it 5 stars. It really does feel cozy and warm, and for what it's worth I did enjoy building the coffee shop with Viv and meeting the cast of characters. It didn't hit for me like I hoped which is disappointing but I don't regret reading it.