Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Ellesfena

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I mostly read nonfiction (especially public health-related), mysteries, and fantasy. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Ellesfena's Quick Questions interview.)

Ellesfena's Reviews:

There’s a Lot More to it Than the Title Implies

They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera

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CBR Bingo: Cityscape First things first, with a title like that it’s obvious that They Both Die at the End is going to be a tearjerker, and I don’t normally enjoy tearjerkers. It’s a testament to Adam Silvera’s writing that I not only finished this book but that I liked it. Mateo and Rufus are teens living in New York who, just after midnight on the same day, get a call from Death-Cast: the service that accurately predicts the day you’ll die and lets you know […]

The World’s Deadliest Animal

The Fever: How Malaria has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years by Sonia Shah

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CBR Bingo: The Wilds (all about malaria, mosquitoes, and pesticides) There’s nothing I like reading about more than infectious disease. I’ve read books about rabies, smallpox, influenza, cholera, plague, and lots of others, but I’d never found one about malaria before, so I was really excited to read The Fever. Sadly, I had a lot of trouble getting into this book. Malaria is really hard to understand. It has a complex disease process, and while Shah breaks it down in the first chapter, I still had trouble […]

The Clouds All Form a Geometric Shape

Boom Town by Sam Anderson

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Bingo square: Sportsball I’ve never been to Oklahoma City. If you’d asked me before I read this book what I knew about it, I think I would have had trouble thinking of a single thing beyond tornadoes and the Oklahoma City bombing. I have zero interest in professional basketball, so I’m not even sure I knew they had a team. Thank goodness for the Sportsball square in Bingo, otherwise I never would have read this. Boom Town is the entire story of Oklahoma City, from […]

The Dream Chooses the Dreamer

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor

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CBR Bingo square: Mythic (in the universe of this book the city of Weep is a mythical place inhabited by gods, that no one is sure really exists) I adored the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy and have read it multiple times, but for some reason I was always hesitant to read Strange the Dreamer, I think because I didn’t really think Laini Taylor could write another series that would be as gripping and original as that trilogy. Obviously, I was incorrect. Lazlo Strange has grown up […]

Mention it all

The Housewives: The Real Story Behind the Real Housewives by Brian Moylan

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Bingo: People Some people consider being a Real Housewives fan a character flaw, but I don’t need that kind of negativity in my life. I don’t consider watching them a guilty pleasure, because I feel no guilt about it (although I refuse to watch the truly heinous women of The Real Housewives of Orange County). The Housewives was meant to be a behind the scenes look at the series, with interviews with current and former cast members, by Brian Moylan, who has been recapping episodes for years, and […]

A predictable twisty mystery where the twist is that I still enjoyed it

Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell

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Bingo Category: Flora Another in the long line of twisty mysteries that are all so similar nowadays, but set apart by some pretty good writing and genuine emotion. You will recognize the setup for Then She Was Gone because you’ve read a similar plot summary a million times: Laurel Mack’s daughter Ellie is abducted, and ten years later she meets and falls in love with Floyd–and upon meeting his daughter, Poppy, is shocked at the physical similarities the girl has to Ellie. Then She Was Gone didn’t […]



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