Library workers are often asked about their favorite books. My go-to answers are distributed between The Westing Game (1978) by Ellen Raskin, True Grit (1968) by Charles Portis, and The Hobbit, which is what I am most likely to answer. Between the Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien has essentially ruined all other high fantasy for me, specifically, forever. Brandon Sanderson, Robert Jordan, George RR Martin, I respect your achievements, but dang those sure are a lot of words you wrote down, huh? 

In 2022, Travis Bladree’s Legends & Lattes went mega best-seller to the surprise and delight of many. This was my gateway to cozy fantasy. There are orcs and swords and magic and whatnot, but there is also a bakery. A bookshop. An interspecies queer romance. Sometimes a mystery element. It was a balm to the soul in these trying times. I enjoyed the book so much I started looking for other books and series that might fit in the cozy fantasy realm. Below, I listed some of my favorite, and least-favorite, cozy fantasy books. All books are available in the Monarch catalog, often in a variety of formats. 

Legends & Lattes (2022) by Travis Baldree
This is the gold standard for cozy fantasy. It’s well-written and filled with appealing and complex characters we come to care about. Viv is an orc. She is battle hardened and weary. She is ready to settle down, and make her living slinging coffee instead of broadswords. As an audience, we know Viv won’t fail, but it sure is satisfying watching it play out. There is a prequel, and a sequel in this series. The stories relate, but don’t necessarily need to be read in order. I’m a series purist, and if I don’t read a series in order I am likely to perish.
The Legends & Lattes series is now up to three books.

Cursed Cocktails (2023) by S.L Rowland
Several imitators cropped up not long after Baldree’s massive success with Legends & Lattes, including this series by S.L. Rowland. While the prose is not as crisp and sparkly like Baldree’s, I still found myself drawn into these fantasy landscapes. The protagonist in book one of this series is an elf, not an orc. And he wants to sell cocktails, not coffee. Formulaic? Yes. But if it ain’t broke, why fix it? I read a lot of cozy mysteries for this reason, as well.
The Tales of Aedrea series is now up to four books.

The House Witch (2022) by Delemhach
Finlay Ashowen is a house witch IN SECRET. In the kingdom of Daxaria, magic is reserved for the rich and powerful, so Fin would like to keep his head down and focus on cooking the uncanny and delicious meals for his royal charges. The House Witch leans more into political intrigue and the machinations of power than the aforementioned series, so they are narratively more complex. I also enjoyed the system of magic portrayed in this series.
The House Witch series is now up to four books. 

Assistant to the Villain (2023) by Hannah Nicole Maehrer
While a sinister castle filled with blood and pain doesn’t scream “cozy”, one might be surprised at how sweet this story is. Evie Sage, our protagonist, stumbles into gainful employment when she needs it the most, but her new boss seems to be the big bad villain of her realm. Evie is a fish out of water who spends the next three books proving how adept she is at villain assistance. I adore the wide cast of characters we get to meet, including a sentient frog who communicates with signs, Wile E. Coyote-style. This book is occasionally very sweet and often incredibly funny. The romance element is of the slow burn variety and it is frickin infuriating.
The fourth book in this series is expected to publish sometime this year. 

How to Become the Dark Lord of Die Trying (2024) by Django Wexler
This was a great variation on the theme. Davi, our protagonist, is trapped in a time loop akin to Groundhog Day, but this time loop takes place in a massive live-action RPG. Resets happen when Davi gets killed. Davi has died over and over in her attempts to defeat the dark lord in the realm she is trapped in. Things don’t really start going her way until she decides to become the dark lord instead of defeating him. These books are much more violent than everything else on the list, and Davi does love to say the Eff-You-See-Kay word, so if that is unappealing maybe pass on this series.
The Dark Lord Davi series is up to two books.

Swordheart (2018) by T. Kingfisher
Yes, this book predates Legends & Lattes, but it does fit within the definition of cozy, and fantasy, and I love T. Kingfisher more than any other author, so I am going to shoehorn her books into every blog post I possibly can. Kingfisher often writes fantasy stories starring middle-aged women, which places me squarely in her demographic audience. The fact that she writes the best, scariest, weirdest stories is all a bonus. Swordheart stars Halla, and when we meet her, she is under the control of some ill-intended relatives. When she accidentally releases the berserker warrior inhabiting an enchanted sword, her world changes irrevocably, and for the better. Swordheart is one of several books set in the World of the White Rat. Characters from other books pop up here and there, which is always deeply enjoyable to me. Those who enjoy this book should run, not walk, to The Saint of Steel series. Each book has fantasy, romance, and horror elements. It works.
There are two books in the Swordheart series, and four books in the Saint of Steel series. 

That One Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon (2021) by Kimberly Lemming
This book is so much fun. It is irreverent, funny, and really spicy. I cannot overstate this facet. If you do not enjoy erotic content, this is not the series for you. If you want a light-hearted spicy romance to delight you on your commute to and from work, this is the one (I am assuming you are listening to an audio copy here). This is called the Mead Mishap series, which is cool because that is the name of the library I work for. 
There are currently three books in the Mead Mishaps series. 

Heretical Fishing (2022) by Haylock Jobson
This series popped up as a recommended read-alike to Dungeon Crawler Carl. There really isn’t anything else like DCC out there, so I was intrigued and excited. The only thing the books really have in common is that the protagonist is large, strong, and male. Here are some things I really loathed about this book: There are no conflicts, and any problems encountered are solved by the end of the chapter. I want smart people solving problems as a group and I want there to be high stakes. All the characters we meet are meant to be flimsy like NPCs, but it comes off as lazy writing. Plus, the plot was deeply predictable. This book was TOO LONG. I usually listen to audiobooks on 1.5 speed, but I had this one cranked up to double speed just to get it over with. The protagonist is Australian and if he calls one more person MATE I will die. Read this series if you want some background noise and aren’t really worried about catching all the plot points. Also, there is very little heresy in this book.
The Heretical Fishing series is now up to five books. 

Maybe things could have been different for me and my relationship with high fantasy if I had gotten my hands on a copy of A Song of Fire and Ice twenty years ago. My work bestie at the time, Aaron, told me about this book he loved and that he recommends it to all his friends and I just have to read it. I had never heard of George RR Martin at that point. So, I went to the public library and searched the catalog for what I believed to be the book my bestie told me about. I am still unsure how I took such a wrong turn, but I ended up checking out book one of Erin Hunter’s massively popular juvenile Warriors series. The series is about war between feral cat colonies and is aimed at a middle-grade audience. I could not figure out why Aaron was so pumped about these books. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so I never told him how underwhelmed I was. Once the HBO series debuted, my attentions were already diverted elsewhere.

Anyone casting around for what to read next might consider using Mead’s Your Next Five Books reader’s advisory tool. You can fill out the form by clicking HERE, and within days you will receive an email containing a book list tailored to the input you shared on the form. We also have one for movies HERE. Visit us on Mead’s second floor for in-person book finding help. As always, happy reading.

The American Library Association recently released their annual list of the top 10 most-challenged books. Take a look at the list HERE. This got me thinking about the kind of material I, personally, was reading in my formative years that would have caused my parents concern. Then, I got curious and asked library staff to tell me about the Forbidden Books and media from their own childhoods. 

Below, I listed the responses from my coworkers by category with a little added commentary by yours truly. Names changed to protect the innocent. Most of the materials listed are available in the Monarch catalog if anyone wants to learn what all the fuss is about. Did you read any books in secret when you were a kid? I’d love to know what they were.

First Category: SEX
A good portion of the off-limits materials my coworkers responded with was due to explicit depictions of a sexual nature. I will never forgive the Puritans for infecting this land with aversion to frippery, be it a ruffled petticoat, or a consensual roll in the hay. 

Co-worker A: “I should not have been reading The Symphony of Ages* by Elizabeth Haydon in 7/8th grade. Great action fantasy with lots of graphic sex scenes. Mom’s policy was that she trusted my judgement and as long as I was reading I could read what I wanted.”
*Book one of this nine-part series is titled Rhapsody: Child of Blood (1999). And I must say, bravo mom. I wish more parents held this attitude. I knew a school librarian who really hated Captain Underpants, and I just couldn’t understand why she would hate something that got kids into reading.

Co-worker B: “Flowers in the Attic* was still a thing when I was a kid. And of course a bunch of my friends weren’t allowed to read Harry Potter because of the witchcraft. Clan of the Cave Bear+ by Auel which has a whole bunch of rape in it … but it sounded cool and historical and maybe a bit magical, which were the things that counted when I read the blurb in middle school.”
*there is a LOT of VC Andrews in the Monarch catalog as you can see HERE. 
+this is the first book in the six-book Earth’s Children series by Jean M. Auel. VC and Jean ruled in the 80s. They were everywhere for years. 

Co-worker C: “TTYL and TTFN* by Lauren Myracle! I don’t think they’re edgy for adults but I learned a lot about uhhh…boys….Also The Clique series would have some interesting, juicy bits that I know my mom wouldn’t let me read/think about. The fact that I can’t type what content they had probably is also an indicator!”
*these series were aimed at teen readers and debuted in 2004. I wonder if they hold up or not, and if mom and dad would approve.

Co-worker D: “Maybe kind of a weird one, but I was super into the Godchild manga series by Kaori Yuki as a teenager, was flipping through the next volume in the bookstore and my Dad looked over my shoulder on a page where the angsty brooding protagonist was very shirtless. I put it away quickly and claimed I was ‘just browsing’, don’t think he ever figured out he’d bought me some of that very series for prior birthdays.”
*while I appreciate that manga can and does get extreme with depictions of sex and violence, and parents should probably be taking a general interest in the books their children consume, I just can’t get worked up about what’s going on in manga when most households have access to the cesspool that is the World Wide Web. 

Second Category: DRUGS
What are you, some kind of SQUARE? Actually, there weren’t too many Forbidden Books with drugs central to a salacious plot in this list. Young adult books depicting drugs and drug use were usually of the cautionary tale variety.

Co-worker E: “We passed around a dog-eared copy of Go Ask Alice in the fourth grade and acted like it was contraband on account of sex AND drug use. I remember being truly dismayed to learn this book was authored by a concerned mother as her way of warning the youth against cool things like sex and drugs* and that it was not a true first-hand account running afoul of hippies like I originally believed.”
*we here at Mead Library do not think drugs are very cool. Sex is cool with enthusiastic consent, tho. Please do not ask any of us out, however.

Co-worker F: “Sweet Valley High* series that I found at St. Vincent De Paul when I was 12.”
*these books are really quite wholesome and I just think I am soooo funny to list them in the DRUGS category. My sister had a steamer trunk full of Sweet Valley High and Nancy Drew courtesy of my mother, who worked at Walden Books in the 1980s. 

Third Category: VIOLENCE
Most of the books I read these days would fall into the VIOLENCE category if one needed to categorize, on account of I mostly only read murder mysteries and MurderBot. I therefore consider the VIOLENCE category to be the superior one for this arbitrary reason.

Co-worker G: “Anything by Stephen King*. Though it was hard not to, when the books were my mom’s.”
*The work of Stephen King has been creating lifelong readers since the 1970s. Ask your friends what was the first “adult” novel they read, and I bet a notable ratio will say “King”.

Fourth Category: ROCK N ROLL
This is the catch-all category for things that didn’t fit nicely elsewhere, but witches and vampires were for sure giving parents fits for awhile there.

Co-worker H: “Twilight* as a 3rd/4th grader. I just wanted to read about cool vampires and a scandalous love triangle!! But there were things in there I probably should not have read haha.”
*are we ever really young if we don’t read questionable things?

Co-worker I: “Wicked at 13/14 – a lot of the politics and the night club scene went over my head. My sister read it after me, and she’s two years younger. My mom asked me after my sister had started to read it if my sister should be reading it, and I said definitely not.”

Co-worker J: “I could read/watch nearly anything*. The only forbidden entertainment was Married with Children.”
*I once visited friends in Nashville and their 11 year-olds could watch Teen Titans but not Spongebob. I asked why so, and the mother said it was because Spongebob was “too weird”. Not being a parent my own self, I don’t think I will ever grasp the caprices of parental censorship. 

Were there any books, movies, music, or television off-limits in your household? Here are some things that my older sister owned in the 1980s and early 90s when we were still fully school children: 2 Live Crew As Nasty as They Wanna Be (take that, Tipper Gore); Andrew Dice Clay live in concert bootlegs; Eddie Murphy Raw on cassette tape; Blood Sugar Sex Magic by The Red Hot Chili Peppers (double take that, Tipper Gore), and Ritual De Lo Habitual by Jane’s Addiction (TRIPLE TAKE THAT, Tipper Gore). Our lovely parents trusted us to engage with appropriate media, and for the most part, we did. My wish is that more parents would raise children confident enough to seek out the media they love, with no worries about judgement or censorship from loved ones.

After all is said and done, it’s really important to understand what is going on when someone challenges a book. Read more about it HERE on the American Library Association webpage. My belief is that many parents are projecting their anxiety onto children’s lit and using book challenges as a means of feeling in control. Many challenges come from parents who have children transitioning out of kindergarten, or grade school, or junior high, and while one cannot stop the progress of time, a book challenge seems like a concrete action someone can take in the name of “protecting the children”. It is not my intention to be flippant, and apologies if I have come across in this way, but book challenges are such a sore spot in the public and school library landscape at this moment that if I don’t laugh I’ll have to cry.

Anyhoo, please consider using the Your Next Five Books tool if you are casting around for something great to read. Or, use the Your Next Five Movies tool if you are a-hankering for something great to watch.