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:

The only thing wrong with small towns are the people who live there.

Glass Houses by Louise Penny

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Dare I hope that I will continue enjoying the later Gamache books much more than the early ones? This series has really been touch and go for me since the beginning, but I’ve enjoyed most of the later ones quite a bit. Glass Houses was no exception, even with a plot that’s ludicrous even by Louise Penny standards (in addition to the weapons of mass destruction from a few books ago, the town of Three Pines is now also [SPOILER] the #1 location on the Canadian/U.S. border […]

Surprisingly Enjoyable

In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead

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For as often as I read mystery thrillers like this, I so rarely enjoy them. And there are so many reasons I shouldn’t have enjoyed In My Dreams I Hold a Knife, but I still did, in spite of all of them. The main character, Jess, is an overachiever preparing to go back to her 10 year college reunion at Duquette, a college which is “just a step below the Ivy League.” In college she was part of a golden group called the East House Seven […]

So Lovely

The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen

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The Magic Fish is an absolutely beautiful graphic novel–both the pictures and the story itself. It’s the story of a boy, Tiến, whose been keeping a secret from his friends and family. Tiến’s parents emigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam. His parents are working on improving their English, and so every night he reads fairy tales with his mother. Meanwhile, he tries to figure out how to cross the language barrier to tell his parents that he’s gay. To help his mother with her English, she […]

Enjoyed it more than may come across in this review

Untamed by Glennon Doyle

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I don’t remember when or why I added this book to my list. When I read the summary, it felt like something I should read, more than something I wanted to read. Untamed is a memoir focusing on the end of Glennon Doyle’s marriage as she meets and falls in love with a woman, and an examination of how she learned to free herself from society’s expectations for women and mothers. I mostly enjoyed this book. Certain parts really didn’t resonate with my own experiences, but […]

Enjoyed it while reading it, then forgot about it almost immediately

Who is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews

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Plot: Florence is an editorial assistant at a publishing company who one day sort of accidentally-on-purpose blows up her unfulfilling life. Soon after, she’s given the chance to work as an assistant for the celebrated pseudonymous author, Maud Dixon. She soon learns that Maud Dixon is in fact a woman named Helen, an unbearably pretentious (my interpretation, not Florence’s) woman living in upstate New York. Helen is working on a novel that takes place in Morocco, and so the two travel there together for her […]

Cozy and Enjoyable

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

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The Thursday Murder Club is a murder mystery (sort of a cozy?) that takes place in a retirement community. If you’re looking for a perfectly enjoyable mystery that’s never scary but has more depth than a cozy and will also make you laugh, this might be a good choice. The four main characters, Joyce, Elizabeth, Ibrahim, and Ron enjoy solving old murders in their spare time, but when a developer is murdered in their community, they decide to help the police (whether the police like it […]



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