Review: Dragons & Dumplings by Laura Greenwood

Dragons & Dumplings (A Falhaven Castle #0.5)
by Laura Greenwood

My Rating: 4 stars

Genre: Cozy Fantasy Romance
Age Category: New Adult
Type of romance: m/f

Blurb:
A princess who wants to bake, a visiting delegation, and a dragon egg in the oven.

Princess Evie loves nothing more than spending the evening baking in the castle’s kitchen with her best friend Nate, even if she’s supposed to be attending royal functions and meeting ambassadors.

When a foreign delegation visits, Nate manages to get some new recipes for them to try. But that’s not all that’s new in the kitchen when Evie is gifted a dragon egg and told to keep it in the fire.

Now, dumplings aren’t the only thing being made in the kitchen.

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Dragons & Dumplings is a prequel to the Falhaven Castle series, a cozy fantasy with a baking dragon, a princess who wants to be in the kitchen over the throne room, and the baker who wants to be there with her. There is a slow burn friends-to-lovers romance, with a pinch of steam in later books, and an ace heroine.

My Review

I received a free copy from the author and voluntarily reviewed it. All opinions are my own.

I was so excited when I heard Laura Greenwood was writing a cozy fantasy series. Having one of my favorite authors write a genre I love was so exciting. I started this one as soon as I could. Dragons & Dumplings is a prequel to the series set 5 years before the first book, I liked how it intrudes Evie and Nate as well as the dragon. I had so much fun reading this one!

I really liked this book. I loved the cozy fantasy vibes and the slight hint of politics going on in this fantasy world. There was enough details to get a bit of a vibe for this world and the different countries, but I am sure more will come in future books. I liked reading about Evie and seeing her interact with her siblings. I also liked the plot line about the dragon egg and seeing it hatch.

Evie is a likable character and she feels realistic. I thought she felt pretty relatable, with her love for food as well as her sensory sensitivities or struggling to understand some social cues which are things I have as well. I liked reading about her and look forward to reading more about her in future books.

And then there was the way Evie interacted and baked with Nate, those scenes were so fun. I really liked the baking scenes, they have a lot of details and it was fun reading those scenes and seeing them bake together. I thought this was nice set up for their romance and the friend to lovers trope is one of my favorite tropes. They were so sweet together and I can’t wait to see their friendship turn into romance.

To summarize: This was such a great introduction to this series. I was so excited that Laura Greenwood is writing a cozy fantasy series and I really enjoyed this prequel. I liked the cozy fantasy vibes and all the baking scenes. Evie is such a great main character and she felt realistic and relatable. I liked seeing her interact with her siblings and the slight bit about the politics. I also liked the dragon plot line. It was fun to see Evie and Nate bake together and the set up for their romance. I like the friends to lovers trope and am looking forward to see their romance develop. I am excited to read the next books in this series!

Links:
– Goodreads
– Bookbub
– Amazon
– B&N
– Kobo

You can also read my review on Goodreads and Bookbub.