Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Good evening, everyone. I'm Leslie Monster, and this is Nightline. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: narfna's Quick Questions interview.)

narfna's Reviews:

This has been such a good year for mysteries and caper comedies. Add this one to your list. #CBRBINGO – Pandemic

Finlay Donovan is Killing It (Finlay Donovan, #1) by Elle Cosimano

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This is another one of those books I knew only after reading the synopsis was going to be A Book For Me. I’ve gotten better and better as I’ve gotten older at picking books I know I will like*. There is a reason most of my reviews are four stars, and it’s not because I go easy on the books, it’s because I know what I will like. Occasionally a stinker slips in and if I give in to curiosity (which happens quite frequently) or […]

“The fact that they have families and parents . . . is why they shouldn’t do these things, not why we should forgive them.” #CBRBINGO – Uncannon

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo

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I have had terrible luck with lit-fic so far this year, so it’s nice that my streak is finally broken. This book was great. Depressing, but great. And I never would have picked it up on my own except that it qualified nicely for the novel in translation category (non-European) for the Read Harder Challenge, and it was short! And very well regarded. So thanks, Read Harder! Doing your job. Kim Jiyoung is a young mother living in Korea. She quit her job in marketing […]

Come for the murder, stay for the food.

Arsenic and Adobo (Tita Rosie's Kitchen, #1) by Mia P. Manansala

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I had a good time with this! For a first novel and for a cozy, it was very good. I really only have two complaints, and Manansala can definitely improve upon both in future books, and I hope she does, because I’d like to keep reading this series. It has some things I really like going for it. Like a lot of culinary cozies, this book follows a young woman (Lila Macapagal) fresh off a break-up, who has recently moved home to help in her […]

“That had been a little more than forty years past. Fatma was born into the world al-Jahiz left behind: a world transformed by magic and the supernatural.”

A Dead Djinn in Cairo (Dead Djinn Universe, #0.5) by P. Djèlí Clark

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The highlight of this short story is definitely the world-building. I was immediately intrigued by the way Clark wrote about his alternate-history Cairo in 1912, populated with djinn and angels and steampunk machinery, and refreshingly devoid of colonialism. This takes place in a Cairo about fifty years after a curious man opened up a gateway through which djinn and other supernatural creatures, along with magic, entered the world. Egypt has become a world superpower, as the djinn helped them to kick the British out of […]

“And so I began my criminal career there in the house of God, with a leaky pen instead of a pistol and books instead of silver for my reward.”

Outlawed by Anna North

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I still don’t know how I feel about this one and it’s been over a month. It was a super fast read, read it only about three hours, and parts of it I really liked, I guess overall I just wasn’t in the mood for a story that wasn’t all HEAs all over the place. Or that at least didn’t kill the one character I liked the most. Thanks for that, by the way. Outlawed is an alternate history western set in 1894-5, in a […]

“Were I to attempt to be good to everyone, to the entire world and to all the creatures living in it, it would be a drop of fresh water in the salt sea. In other words, a wasted effort. Thus, I decided to do specific good; good which would not go to waste. I’m good to myself and my immediate circle.”

Baptism of Fire (The Witcher, #3) by Andrzej Sapkowski

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This series is so weird. This book doesn’t really have a beginning, middle, or end. Geralt spends the whole time hiding his feelings and being mad that people like him and want to help him. They spend the whole book on a fruitless quest. At one point we spend forty pages with all the characters getting drunk off weird mandrake root brew and chit-chatting, no forward plot movement at all. The main conflict of the book has no resolution, and the resolution that we are […]



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