Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About andtheIToldYouSos

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Bookseller by day, book reader by night...and hopefully a reviewer somewhere in between. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: andtheIToldYouSos's Quick Questions interview.)

andtheIToldYouSos's Reviews:

Becky Chambers and the Quest for Righteous Representation

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

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…because lord knows we cannot deal with any more from that dreadful she-who-must-not-be-named and her unquenchable desire to hurt the hearts and minds of the people who grew up with, admired, and felt welcomed by Harry Potter and company. People are who they say they are, and she-who-must-not-be-named can do us all a favor and shout her nonsense directly into a portal to hell. Anywho! Luckily, Becky Chambers is on the scene to raise our spirits through the roof and out into the beautiful and […]

Bunnatine, Immy, Demon Lover, and Ghost Boyfriend walk into a bar…

Get In Trouble by Kelly Link

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Well, sometimes it’s a bar filled with men raised by wolves. Sometimes it’s a space ship. A warehouse full of mysterious sleeping people. A magical house full of “summer people”. A haunted house on a space ship. A lake where a few dozen nudists disappeared in the seventies. The penthouse party at a hotel full of dentists and super heroes. The crumbling remains of a Wizard of Oz theme park. A pocket universe that opened above Florida. Kelly Link writes things that are fantastic and […]

Scooby-Dooby-Cthulhu

Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

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Thirteen years ago, a scrappy pack of teen detectives (and their faithful dog) solved a lake-monster mystery in a sleepy northwestern town. The guy in the monster suit would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids! Smash-cut to thirteen years later, and our teens are far from thriving members of society. Plagued by nightmares and hallucinations, powered by alcohol and violence, the twenty-something remnants of the Blyton Hills Detective Club are coming to a powerful realization: they caught the […]

terrific writing about terrible things

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

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Trigger Warning: please read the tags before deciding to read this review and/or book. If you feel that you can read this book, then you must. If you feel that you cannot, I will pass no judgement. Perhaps you have heard of the drama surrounding this release. American Dirt was climbing the charts and dominating the controversy  conversation when My Dark Vanessa tip-toed in and threw a hat into the ring. There was an implication of plagiarism from a woman who wrote a memoir about being groomed and […]

“That which does not kill us,” I said, “has to get up extra early in the morning if it wants to get us next time.”

Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch

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Peter Grant and his partner of sorts, Lesley May, have to do a lot of explaining themselves. Not just their actions as members of The Folly, the (tiny) branch of the London Met that deals with “unusual circumstances”, but also every reference that they make about the modern world. Why is that? They’re making these references to The Nightingale; their commanding officer who has been fighting the bad guys (thieves, murderers, Nazis) since before WWII. Before WWII? But how? Well, Nightingale stopped aging in the […]

Dreamy but Derivative (also CANNONBALL!)

And I Do Not Forgive You: Stories & Other Revenges by Amber Sparks

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These stories have been told before. Most are fairly clever fairy tales retold, some are veiled retellings of myth and history, and a few are sparkling new. They have been told before in the sense that they are retellings, but they have also been told before in the sense that other authors have done these before, and done them better. It was difficult to find the author’s voice; reading the collection felt less like one author’s work and more like an anthology of the who’s […]



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