Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About faintingviolet

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A reader and caffeine addict who consumes all sorts of books, some just more frequently than others. Your CBR Book Club Maven with over a decade of Cannonballing experience I believe in the beauty that comes from a common goal of reading, reviewing, and discussing. Also, Fuck Cancer. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: faintingviolet's Quick Questions interview.)

faintingviolet's Reviews:

“She unsettled him; he anchored her. Together, they could be more than they were apart.”

Do You Want to Start a Scandal by Tessa Dare

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I had a good time with Do You Want to Start a Scandal, primarily because it does one of my favorite things by putting a good deal of emotional intelligence into a character who may not be expected to have it and then let them deduce the world around them. It is deployed to good use as Charlotte Highwood goes head-to-head with Diplomat turned Spy Piers Brandon, Lord Granville after they are caught together during the Parkhurst ball but are not in fact the couple […]

A Pair of Novellas for the February Holidays

A Fake Girlfriend for Chinese New Year by Jackie Lau

A Big Surprise for Valentine's Day by Jackie Lau

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When I read Donut Fall in Love two weeks ago I was reminded almost viscerally of two of Jackie Lau’s novellas from her Holidays with the Wongs series. The chemistry between Donut’s Ryan and Lindsay had the same sort of feeling that A Fake Girlfriend for Chinese New Year’s Zach and Jo did, and it made me want to revisit them, and with Chinese New Year this week (February 1st) I needed no further inducement to pick it back up and give myself a Monday […]

The way these characters can understand what isn’t being said, while being delightfully snarky is just the best.

And They Lived Happily Ever After by Therese Beharrie

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Representation on the page matters, and while finding representation that feels exactly like you can be some of the most affirming experiences out there, finding representation that speaks to a component of your life that isn’t exactly how you experience it is also incredibly important. Beharrie includes in her acknowledgements that a lot of what we see on the page in And They Lived Happily Ever After draws from her own experiences with Anxiety, and as usual, when an author so very obviously writes from […]

“I’d rather live with a tender heart, because that is the key to feeling the beat of all of the other hearts.”

Little Weirds by Jenny Slate

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What a delightful, odd, heartfelt book. Many thanks to NTE for sending it my way. I put this one on my to read list following watching Jenny Slate’s Netflix special Stage Fright which is a mix of a stand up and documentary. When I finished Stage Fright I was much more interested in Slate than I had been before. Having now finished Little Weirds which she wrote at about the same time, I feel as though I have had an interesting, if not entirely understandable, […]

I hope someday we get a better version of this book.

Seduction: A History from the Enlightenment to the Present by Clement Knox

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Dear God, the self-indulgent heterosexual, masculine arrogance that is evident on the nearly 500 pages of this book is enough to make me want to hurl it across the room. Instead, I finished it (while skimming entire sections as needed, I’m not here to punish myself) because while this book does contain interesting information and occasionally a look at some of the past three centuries’ literary output through the angle of the seduction narrative (thus the two stars I am awarding it) it unfortunately buckles […]

Another Baking Romance

Donut Fall in Love by Jackie Lau

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After the debacle of Always, in December I decided to make sure the next thing I read didn’t make me angry (don’t worry, future angry reviews will come – and soon –  I just usually like to give myself 24 hours to get eloquent with the rage) so I put down the two books I was reading and went back to an ARC that I had not been able to get to before the deadline (my apologies to the fine folks at NetGalley and Berkley) […]



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