Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Pooja

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Ardent reader of pretty much anything, including the backs of shampoo bottles. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Pooja's Quick Questions interview.)

Pooja's Reviews:

The Original Elizabeth and Mary

The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry That Forged the Medieval World by Shelley Puhak

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Two women, rival queens, rule kingdoms that lie side by side. Over the course of decades, they scheme and intrigue and fight both to keep their crowns and to take away the other’s. One will die peacefully, the other violently, and from their actions a dynasty will come to an end. The Dark Queens follows the lives of Brunhild and Fredegund, who were Frankish queens during the 500s. They had extremely disparate origins, with one starting as a Spanish princess and the other as a palace […]

Goose Girl Redux

Little Thieves by Margaret Owen

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“I think there are lives that make it easy to be good. Or what most people call good. When you have wealth, status, family, it’s easy to be a saint, it costs you nothing. I can’t say if you’re a good person or not. But the more I know of you, the more I understand that the world keeps making you choose between survival and martyrdom. No one should fault you for wanting to live.” Vanya is the goddaughter of Death and Fortune, but that […]

Melania Trump Fanfiction

Our American Friend by Anna Pitoniak

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(“I felt helpless,” she said. “Here it is, I thought. This is what the bargain comes down to. This is your destiny, Lara. You will be a part of this, this tragedy. And there is nothing you can do about it. Because you chose this.”) Sofie, a former White House correspondent, is astonished to be chosen to be the biographer of the mysterious First Lady Lara Caine. As Lara tells her story, Sofie comes to realize that the secrets she’s spilling out could be ruinous […]

A Dark Olympus Double Feature

Neon Gods by Katee Robert

Electric Idol by Katee Robert

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Neon Gods – 3.5 stars Persephone lives in deadly, glittering Olympus, where her mother is one of the leaders as Demeter. When her engagement to wife-killing Zeus is announced, she flees the upper city right into the arms of a man who wasn’t supposed to exist. I came to Goodreads, I saw that this was a sexy Hades and Persephone retelling, I devoured the book. I liked the characters of Persephone and Hades, who both must wear masks of different kinds and buy into the […]

Window Dressing

To Marry and to Meddle by Martha Waters

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The English countryside in early September was a glorious place. The sun shone. The bees buzzed. The heady scent of wildflowers lingered in the air. Emily Turner could not think of a more romantic setting for the world’s least romantic marriage proposal. Julian needs a wife who makes him look respectable to remake his theatre’s reputation, Emily needs to get out from under her parents’ thumb and away from a skeevy suitor. Marriage sounds like the perfect solution – but being married is more complicated […]

‘Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?’

Violeta by Isabel Allende

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Violeta, who was born during the Spanish influenza pandemic and turns one hundred years old during the coronavirus pandemic, writes a memoir to hand down to her grandson Camilo. I’ve heard a lot of good things about Isabel Allende, and in fact have several others of her books on hand, piled in the tottering tower that is my TBR list. However, this is the first book by her that I’ve read, and it did not reach the heights I was expecting. Not that this is […]



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