Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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I've been told I have a reading problem. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: lowercasesee's Quick Questions interview.)

lowercasesee's Reviews:

No connection between these, I’m just behind

The Bride Test by Helen Hoang

Gossip Girl by Cecily von Ziegesar

The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzie Lee

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Holy moses I got so behind, and I still have one more I need to review but with the amount I’ve been talking about it offline, it definitely deserves its own review from me. So let’s get started. The Bride Test, by Helen Hoang I read and reviewed the first book in this series, The Kiss Quotient, and wasn’t so prude I wouldn’t read the second, so here we are. I like that the two books are connected without this one feeling like a sequel (a […]

A mildly magical murder mystery

Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey

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The only thing worse than not ever receiving my Hogwarts letter would have been not getting one, but three years later seeing my sister get one. Can you imagine being that close but by a simple fluke of I don’t know genetics or something it’s just always out of reach. There are times I really feel for Petunia Dursley (only times!) Magic for Liars is set in a decidedly less-magical Hogwarts – a school for mages, but one that seems almost down to earth. You […]

I need to better screen my recommendations

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris

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How do I say this without being unkind … but just because it’s a true story doesn’t mean it’s going to be a good book. In this particular case, I think that has less to do with the story and more to do with the author. In my opinion, Heather Morris just isn’t a good writer. The book – and Lale’s story – really suffers for it. True stories like Lale’s are absolutely vital if we are to avoid repeating history but Morris seems determined […]

Either shorten it or split it

The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay

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I read Guy Gavriel Kay’s Sailing to Sarantium and its sequel last year (or maybe the year before) and thoroughly enjoyed them. So much fantasy feels so very centered on western European culture and histories and Kay breaks the mold a little bit with some very Ottoman-inspired fantasy. The Lions of Al-Rassan, which I was very much looking forward to, was similar in that respect, I just wish it had been trimmed down, or possibly split across two books. This is a sprawling fantasy story covering multiple […]

Beautiful writing, if a little drifting

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

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I’ve joked that a friend once recommended a Dan Brown book and I no longer take recommendations from her, but I lied. Less was her suggestion and I am so so glad I listened. Arthur Less’s 50th birthday is approaching, as is the wedding of the young man he was until very recently dating. He’d prefer to deal with neither of these things, so he instead accepts every other invitation on his desk and signs up to send most of the year traveling much of the world, […]

A true story from right here at home

S Street Rising: Crack, Murder, and Redemption in D.C. by Ruben Castaneda

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Five years ago, I moved to the Washington, D.C., that is. Gentrification (likely) isn’t over, I imagine that more neighborhoods will transition, the cost of living will continue to rise, long-time residents will continue to be pushed out, but the D.C. I moved to is broadly the D.C. I know today. The city was very different as recently as ten years ago, but boy howdy has it changed since the 1990s. S Street Rising is the memoir of journalist Ruben Castaneda. In it, he details […]



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