Reviews

A Pirate's Life for Tea by Rebecca Thorne

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gillyg19's review

adventurous funny lighthearted mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

This book was great from the dedication page on. I loved the adventure, the characters, the mystery. The pirates were a fantastic addition to this sequel. The main characters are so lovable. I will absolutely continue reading this series.

wardenred's review

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adventurous hopeful lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

“We aren’t in love,” Bobbie retorted hotly.
Enemies to lovers. Or rather, friends to enemies to lovers. Kianthe grinned. That was one of her favorite plots in a novel.

This was a really quick and engrossing read for me. Though I feel I should note that, unlike the previous book in the series, this one hardly read as a cozy fantasy at all. More like, a regular old-school adventure fantasy story with pirates, traveling, heists, magic, searching for clues to a mystery, and helping defeat a bad guy. There were definitely some moments that I’ve come to associate with cozy fantasy as a genre—moments focusing on communities and making each other’s lives better. But overall, I feel like this story would be better described as lighthearted and hopeful than cozy.

I liked seeing how Reina and Kianthe’s relationship has been growing and evolving. It’s honestly lovely to see an established relationship that combines romance and passion and that comfortable familiarity you get from sharing your life with another person. They understand each other so much better now, and they’re so much better at compromising and talking things out and not letting the hard parts keep them from the good parts. Kianthe has also grown on me so much as an individual character. With Reina, it’s more complicated; for the most part, I like her, but some of the conclusions she comes to while dealing with her baggage of being the villain’s guard are things I viscerally disagree with. But, hey, that makes her a complex character who isn’t all black and white, so can’t complain about that, right?

While the story is told through Reina and Kianthe’s alternating POVs, it’s not really their story. Their own goals feel like a mere side plot to the real story where the real protagonists are Serina and Bobbie: respectively, a Robin Hood-ish pirate who steals food from the rich to distribute it to those in need and the constable in the service of the bad guy who tries to be a good person by being all lawful, except she gradually has to accept that in this case, the law is bad actually. Theirs is also the main romance—friends to enemies to lovers, my very favorite trope! And it hits pretty hard, despite being told entirely through Kianthe and Reina’s eyewitness accounts instead of the reader ever getting to delve into Bobbie or Serina’s first-hand experiences. I actually found this approach really interesting: the two narrators actually being side characters in someone else’s story.

The new characters were fun to meet, and I absolutely adored Serina and her determination to do something about the crappy system instead of putting up with it. The thing that rubbed me the wrong way about the previous book was that message that felt like, “There’s evil in the world, but you can’t do anything about it, you can just escape it and start a nice life somewhere else while the evil ruins other people’s lives.“ Which would be one thing if the characters through whom this message was conveyed were, like, regular small folk, not the most powerful mage in the setting and someone who knows plenty of the villain’s secrets and weak spots. Serina cares very much about other people, and that immediately endeared me to her—and I loved seeing Kianthe and Reina embroiled in the plot of actually fighting badness for the sake of others. Combined with the hints about how the evil queen plotline may develop later and what they can actually *do* about it, I’m way more excited for the next installment.

It was also super nice to see all the folks from the previous installment show up, even though most of them were more cameos than returning characters. Diarn Feo got a rather prominent role, though, and they’re my favorite, so yay for that! If only there could be more Matild, too, she’s so awesome. Maybe next book?

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