Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Leslie

CBR13 participant

I'm an English prof who loves reading--ready to read and review books for a good cause.

Leslie's Reviews:

Past, Present, and Future in Romance

The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory

Naked in Death by J.D. Robb

A Kiss at Midnight by Eloisa James

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A key feature of romance is the obstacle–what keeps the main characters apart. I’m finding it interesting looking at how this convention gets translated into different plots and time periods. Often it’s class difference or political rivalries, or sometimes it is a misunderstanding or a bad first impression. Eloisa James in A Kiss at Midnight uses the Cinderella story as her foundation, but she modernizes the narrative so that the reasons keeping her Cinderella (here, Kate Daltry) and Prince (Gabriel, Prince of Warl-Marburg-Baalsfeld) apart are more complex […]

Well now I am a romance reader

Daring and the Duke by Sarah MacLean

Brazen and the Beast by Sarah MacLean

Wicked and the Wallflower by Sarah MacLean

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In a previous Cannonball Read post I referenced not reading romance. I need to amend that post–I used to not read romance; now it is almost all I read. I’ve been puzzling through why, and I’ve settled on the idea that romance is very formulaic. This is usually considered a defect in literature, but I’d argue that formulas exist for a reason (Shakespeare and Austen are formulaic), and at this point in the pandemic, the a work of television, film, or literature that works well […]

A worthy addition to the post-apocalyptic YA canon

The Pox Ward by Kendra Griffin

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Reading a book about a pandemic during a pandemic can be both rewarding and somewhat claustrophobic. On the one hand, you pick up on certain nuances you may have missed, or you make connections you wouldn’t have otherwise. When in the summer of 2020 I read Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers, set in the gay community during the early days of the AIDS crisis, I reflected on how I shared with the protagonist, to some extent, the hyper-awareness of my body and the terror of a positive […]

Stephen King at his Stephen King-iest

11/22/63 by Stephen King

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I’m a fan of Stephen King, although 11/22/63 (2011) was the first work of his I have picked up in awhile. This novel returns to themes he’s explored in The Dead Zone (what if you could prevent a horrible, world-altering tragedy by murdering someone?) and it features a brief interlude in Derry, Maine, where It takes place. For better (mostly) and for worse (some of the time), the novel showcases King’s quirks as an author. In 11/22/63, English teacher Jake Epping (living in the present day) is shown a […]

Verity is No Rebecca

Verity by Colleen Hoover

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It’s probably unfair to compare Verity (2018) to classics of the gothic such as Rebecca and Jane Eyre, but the parallels are unmistakable. A young woman finds herself enthralled with an older man who harbors a terrible secret concerning his wife. Isolated at his home, the heroine must discover the secret and save him while he, well, broods. Here, the protagonist is Lowen Ashleigh, a novelist who accepts a lucrative offer to complete the last two books of a successful series by Verity Crawford, who has been completely incapacitated […]

Little Miss Prairie Bitch

Confessions of a Prairie Bitch by Allison Arngrim

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Even though I was an avid reader of Little House on the Prairie as a kid (I was a bookish child who elected to stay in from recess and read and must have worked my way through the series half a dozen times), I have never actually watched a complete episode of the ’70s-era television show. That didn’t stop me from picking up Confessions of a Prairie Bitch (2010) by Allison Arngrim, her memoir of working as a child actor on that series. I was persuaded by […]



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