Another YA fantasy novel from my Hugo reading list, this one came in at a hefty 400 pages – still significantly less than some other nominees in this category, and unlike several of its Lodestar competitors, it has the structural discipline to resolve its central conflict within one book instead of leaving cliffhangers dangling across a trilogy. That's worth noting upfront and worth crediting.
The overall plot is a fun idea: a nerdy overachiever who plays D&D stumbles through a portal into a coffeeshop in a magical alternate universe and meets a swoon-worthy peer. The concept of overlap between the two worlds is genuinely enjoyable worldbuilding — imagine a Target where some of the merchandise is magical, and coffeeshops that serve tonics that create psychological or emotional boosts rather than just sugar and caffeine. The sapphic romance between the leads is sweet and the misunderstandings and stakes of teen dating are a fun read, even if they occasionally feel like they're being viewed through an adult hindsight/idealization lens.
The standout worldbuilding details are the ones C.B. Lee commits to fully: a dragon that's been minified and treated like a pampered chihuahua is an absolute delight, and a cat named Fancy who gets swapped to the size of a VW bus is the kind of chaotic detail that deserved a full resolution and doesn't quite get one. I could read an entire children's book about Fancy and the dragon negotiating their size-swap situation. The dragon is very smug about the arrangement. Fancy is not.
The book does have some consistent YA pacing problems. There are sections that run long — oversleeping, clothing, hair — that could have been cut without losing anything. The actual coffeeshop features less prominently than the D&D elements, which feels like a missed opportunity given the title. The evil villain is glaringly obvious from early on, which deflates some of the suspense. And the book has a tendency to re-explain things that didn't need re-explaining, which slows the momentum in the middle sections.
The child ritual sacrifice in the alt world is handled lightly enough that it functions more as a stakes-raiser than genuine darkness — though readers sensitive to that framing should know it's there. Content warning accordingly.
What saves the book is the climax and resolution. The "Counterpart"-style solution — sanctioned gateways between the two alternate universes, with each world able to leverage the strengths of the other — is genuinely satisfying and optimistic in a way that a lot of portal fantasy isn't. It earns its ending. The food descriptions throughout are also fantastic, even when they're doing some of the same over-explaining work as the rest of the middle.
For a Lodestar nominee, this is a solid mid-tier read. It's fun, it's sapphic, it has a chihuahua dragon and a VW bus-sized cat, and it closes its own loop. In a category where some nominees require you to commit to 1,200 pages across three books just to be informed, that counts for something.
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