Did I just read 20 books in a row from the same series?  Pretty much, yes.  And there are many more.  I cannot explain why I was so enthralled with these books.   The books are set in coastal Oregon, but the author clearly is not an Oregonian at all and has just fundamental misinformation about living in Oregon. It felt petty to be picking at these things and I tried to let it go, but when she made a big deal about there being so many bugs in Oregon in the summer, it was just too much!  And I continued to be blown away when people write about legal cases without doing any meaningful research about the law or legal process in the place they are supposedly writing about.  In this case, no minimally competent Oregon attorney read this book before publication and I just find that irritating, especially when there are things like clear ethics violations that are completely inconsistent with the character's developed personality and the level of competence they supposedly have an attorney.  

Even with these distractions that really do throw me off because it demonstrates such an incredible lack of research, I found the stories fun and quirky.  There is a lot of willing suspension of disbelief, like way more than you would want for a story about ghosts. The ghost rules of existence are inconsistent and sometimes feel like they are changed in order for the author to write herself out of a plotting dead-end.  I did not like that, but at the same time I just kept reading...for 20 books.  I kept reading until I just didn't want to read them at all anymore and thus stopped cold turkey after book 20.  The stories got too repetitive and the plotlines just too far fetched (yes, more far fetched than a ghost living in the house that the new owner of the house can see and communicate with).  I also found the puritanistic discretion/shame the main character has about sex as just an excuse for the author not to deal with what could have been a really fun exploration of the human-ghost love affair.  This is left to the reader's imagination, except that the way it is done made me feel like it was invading her privacy to even think about because she is so private about it.  I kept thinking surely by the next book the author is going to give up the game and add some steamy details to the relationship, but, alas, 20 books in and I was finally just bored with it.  Would I go back to the series?  Maybe.  But I am going to need some distance since I really did burn myself out on them.

Do not recommend.

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I was pretty convinced that this book was just going to be silly.  The art and title are, well, silly.  Classic example of not judging a book by its cover.  This isn't that at all.  This is a really subtle story about love, friendship, found family, and making life what you want of it.  I found everything about it charming and just a real delight.  The relationship dynamics and dialogue were really well developed, but I particularly love a good fantasy book that pulls you into a world without spending pages describing that world to you.  In this story, the world just is and I just loved that.  

Legends and Lattes: Highly Recommend.

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Having absolutely fallen unexpectedly in love with the first book, I was thrilled to find there was a second one I could jump right into, but alas the second book was a huge disappointment. All the subtlety of Lattes was gone. The world was over-described and the relationships felt forced.  The nuance of the main character that was so unusually charming was gone in place of a predictable and trite backstory to explain who she was in Latte.  Super disappointing.  Just skip this one.

​Do not recommend.  

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