Craving More Fantasy After Reading Legends & Lattes? Here Are Five Books Like The Series That’ll Warm Your Soul

If Legends & Lattes was about trading a sword for brewing beans, this book is about trading world-ending necromancy for good paperwork and mostly legal spell usage.

The first book in L.G. Estrella’s Unconventional Heroes series introduces us to two powerful (and slightly unhinged) necromancers, a fastidious bureaucrat, and a very over-it elf who team up to form one of the most delightfully chaotic adventuring parties this side of Thune.

But what makes it Legends & Lattes-adjacent isn’t just the fantasy setting—it’s the tone. This series is fun. Like, snort-laugh-while-reading-on-public-transport fun. There’s a clear refusal to take itself too seriously, while still delivering surprisingly heartfelt moments between a found family of misfits, magical guardians, and someone who is far from your typical hero. Think cozy chaos with a side of fireballs and skeletons.

And, much like our beloved Viv, these characters are all trying—sometimes awkwardly, sometimes explosively—to leave their pasts behind and build something new, together. With zombies.

Set in the frostbitten heart of medieval Russia, this book might seem like a cold drink at first, but look closer. If Legends & Lattes is a mug of spiced chai by the fire, The Bear and the Nightingale is a mug of hot mulled wine while the wind howls outside your cottage and something ancient stirs in the woods.

This is a mystical place where the old gods are fading and new rules threaten the magic of the land. Here we meet Vasya, a fiercely independent girl with the ability to see spirits that others cannot. Much like Viv rejects the life of swords and slayings, Vasya pushes back against the role society tries to force on her. She chooses freedom. She chooses magic. And it’s breathtaking.

Although there are no coffee shops, there are hearth fires, whispered folklore, and powerful beings lurking in the woods. Sure, this one is actually a little darker, a little chillier (literally), and a little moodier, but it’s still brimming with the same kind of quiet magic and emotional payoff.

Vasya’s story isn't low-stakes in the same way Viv’s café adventures are, but it shares that powerful theme of choosing your own path, even when the world insists you stay in your box. 

This one is perhaps the most Legends & Lattes of the bunch, but subtract the coffee and add lots of enchanted tea in its place. Mika Moon is a witch who’s grown up keeping her powers a secret (witches must always be alone, after all; safety first). But when she gets an unexpected invitation to tutor three very chaotic magical children at a mysterious countryside manor? She says yes and isn’t afraid to shake things up. Would Viv approve? Absolutely.

If Viv had a wand and traded coffee for potions, she might have been Mika Moon. This book is pure cozy fantasy comfort. Found family? Check. Adorable romance? Check. A grumpy librarian-type who secretly has a heart of gold? Also check. It’ll make you laugh, cry, and maybe even take up baking scones. It’s the literary equivalent of walking into a warm cottage after a rainy day: spellbinding and sweet.  

If you loved the slow, soul-rebuilding pace of Viv finding community and purpose beyond adventuring, this is the book that will hit all your cozy receptors.

Imagine if Viv’s coffee shop had been a seaside orphanage for very special magical kids (including a six-year-old Antichrist with a penchant for collecting buttons and being adorable)—well, this would be her story. Linus Baker is a buttoned-up bureaucrat (think beige socks and tightly clutched umbrellas) whose life is changed forever when he’s sent to investigate said orphanage and discovers a chaotic, wonderful home full of misunderstood magic and big-hearted oddballs.

While Viv’s journey was about building something new and meaningful, The House in the Cerulean Sea is about realizing you want that kind of life in the first place. Like Legends & Lattes, this book is about choosing kindness over judgment, building connection over control, embracing who you are, whether you’re a wyvern, a gnome, or just a tired government employee with a cat, and then carving out a space for yourself in a world that’s all too eager to box you in.

No swords. No wars. Just radical softness and magical misfits living their best lives. In other words, this book is basically a warm hug in novel form.