It might be recency bias, but I think I like Bookshops and Bonedust more than Legends and Lattes. It's at the very least just as good as the first book, with the same lighthearted cozy wit and sense of adventure; but maybe a combination of the author's more experienced hand or the focus on a younger Viv going through a core experience, let me connect more to the story, character, and themes of this one. I really liked the repeated imagery in the latter half of people standing on different parts of the same hill and seeing different things, of windows of opportunities at the wrong time for two people walking different paths, of stories past the stories; it instilled Bookshops and Bonedust with a sense of wistful bittersweetness that I don't remember the first book having, and it reframed and made Legends and Lattes better in retrospect, which is quite a feat.

I loved it a lot. If you want a cozy fantasy, you can't get much better than this.

If you absolutely had to, you can read this fine on it's own; but I'd really recommend reading Legends and Lattes first. I think they work really well in that order