Tag: Rebecca Thorne

Review – A Pirate’s Life for Tea

Posted April 9, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – A Pirate’s Life for Tea

A Pirate's Life for Tea

by Rebecca Thorne

Genres: Fantasy, Romance
Pages: 384
Series: Tomes and Tea #2
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

While searching for stolen dragon eggs, newly engaged couple Kianthe and Reyna find themselves smack-dab in the middle of a swashbuckling love story.

On one side is Serina, a failed farmer turned river pirate. Her booty? Wheat, grains, and the occasional jar of imported tea leaves. It's quite the embarrassment to Diarn Arlon, the powerful lord of the Nacean River, and he'll conscript anyone to bring her to justice. Especially Kianthe, the elemental mage who just crashed his party, and her somewhat-scary fiancée.

Begrudgingly, the couple joins forces with Bobbie, one of Arlon's constables--who happens to be Serina's childhood friend. Bobbie is determined to capture the pirate before anyone else, but it would be a lot easier if Serina didn't absolutely loathe her now.

As Kianthe and Reyna watch this relation-shipwreck from afar, it quickly becomes apparent that these disaster lesbians need all the help they can get. Luckily, matchmaking is Reyna's favorite past time. The dragon eggs may have to wait.

A Pirate’s Life for Tea is the second in Rebecca Thorne’s series about Reyna and Kianthe, and… it might be the last one I read. I get how the adventure and romance of it will interest people, but something just isn’t clicking for me — it feels so terribly young, and I’m not saying that because I think it’s aimed at being cosy, but because the interactions between the characters don’t feel particularly grown up (even as they’re having sex).

The fantasy world it’s set in also fails to feel quite fleshed out: it felt a bit like in a video game, where as you progress, bits of the map get revealed — only I’m not sure the map’s there to be revealed until Kianthe and Reyna go there. (I don’t just mean the actual literal map, either, I mean the cultures and broad strokes of what’s out there for them to find.)

Maybe I’m wrong, and it’s all planned already, but I just didn’t feel it in reading the book.

Anyway, I can see how it would be a lot of fun for others, but it’s not my cup of tea (I don’t even like tea, so that’s not too surprising). I might read more in the future, maybe if I need something easy and morally simple to read, but not when I have so much else on my TBR that sounds tempting.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea

Posted August 30, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea

Can't Spell Treason Without Tea

by Rebecca Thorne

Genres: Fantasy, Romance
Pages: 336
Series: Tomes and Tea #1
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

All Reyna and Kianthe want is to open a bookshop that serves tea. Worn wooden floors, plants on every table, firelight drifting between the rafters
 all complemented by love and good company. Thing is, Reyna works as one of the Queen’s private guards, and Kianthe is the most powerful mage in existence. Leaving their lives isn’t so easy.

But after an assassin takes Reyna hostage, she decides she’s thoroughly done risking her life for a self-centered queen. Meanwhile, Kianthe has been waiting for a chance to flee responsibility–all the better that her girlfriend is on board. Together, they settle in Tawney, a town nestled in the icy tundra of dragon country, and open the shop of their dreams.

What follows is a cozy tale of mishaps, mysteries, and a murderous queen throwing the realm’s biggest temper tantrum. In a story brimming with hurt/comfort and quiet fireside conversations, these two women will discover just what they mean to each other
 and the world.

Rebecca Thorne’s Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea is unashamedly inspired by Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes, tapping into the same “stone-cold badass decides to settle down and serve hot drinks” vein. Reyna is one of the queen’s elite bodyguards, but after a serious incident in which she nearly gets killed in the process of protecting her queen — a queen who is clearly psychopathic — she decides to listen to her girlfriend’s suggestions and run off to run a bookshop/teashop somewhere the queen won’t find them for a while.

This is all somewhat stymied by her girlfriend Kianthe being the most important mage in her country, if not the world, and also as a result effectively a foreign diplomat. Needless to say, they can’t settle into total obscurity: Reyna’s battle prowess is quickly obvious, as is Kianthe’s ability as a mage.

Because of the psychopathic queen and the action scenes, this doesn’t quite fit into the same niche as Legends & Lattes, to my mind. Reyna hasn’t really put down her sword so much as decided to stop serving that queen, which is really not the same. It also feels a lot “younger”, perhaps because things are very black-and-white: the queen is obviously a monster, from a line of monsters; Reyna’s old partner in the guard is a bit slimy and definitely after her body; Kianthe is at times a bit of a sullen teenager about her power and how it marks her out without making people care for her as a person (and even obscuring who she is as a person). It doesn’t reckon very well with Reyna’s probable trauma or even with Kianthe’s anxiety (though we see her having panic attacks, it doesn’t feel like they get addressed very seriously).

It also focuses a bit more on the romance aspect, and a lot less on the practicalities of putting together a shop and drawing in customers, compared to Legends & Lattes. All in all, it feels like some of the themes and framings of YA, and it left things feeling less complex. That’s not a bad thing if that’s what you’re interested in reading, to be clear — but it could be disappointing for those who really just want another Legends & Lattes, and I found it a mite unsatisfying.

There is an ongoing plot as well which will clearly continue through at least another book, so there’s that as well. That’s an opportunity for some of the things I’ve mentioned to change/develop, and I’m curious enough about the characters and world to read it.

Overall, I had a fun time, without falling in love with it.

Rating: 3/5

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