Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About wicherwill

CBR13 participant
CBR14 Participant
CBR15 Participant
CBR16 Participant
CBR17 Participant
CBR17 Comments
CBR17 Levels

She/her. Longtime lurker, goodreads addict :D (Learn more about this Cannonballer: wicherwill's Quick Questions interview.)

wicherwill's Reviews:

and we’re back to Arasht

Tadek and the Princess by Alexandra Rowland

by Leave a Comment

This story serves as a backstory filler for Tadek, one of the khayalar from Rowland’s first book, A Taste of Gold and Iron. It’s very sweet—ritualistic, formal, and heart-wrenching in the way that only fantasy novels, highly focused on found families and deep emotional connections, can be. As noted in the blurb, Tadek met the late Crown Princess Mihrişah many years ago and immediately fell into khayalar-love with her, and he hasn’t really examined what that could mean for his present life. It falls to our […]

not all romances should get a second chance

Before I Let Go by Kennedy Ryan

by Leave a Comment

I go into all romance novels with an open mind, but this second-chance romance between divorced co-parents who just might rekindle their love left me disappointed. While the premise of revisiting a past relationship is one of my favorite tropes, this one is not it. The biggest frustration? NO ONE in this book EVER talks to each other. Seriously, every misunderstanding feels like it could’ve been solved with one honest conversation. Instead, we get page after page of assumptions, misinterpretations, and characters jumping to the […]

despite reading them months apart, the reviews will go up in the same day

Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett

by Leave a Comment

here is the issue I just do not remember enough of what happened in this book, and since it’s been literally six months+ since I finished it (or so Goodreads tells me, I Do. Not. Recall) it’s a very slim chance that I will remember more of it by staring very intently at my computer screen. SO, down a rabbit hole I go, trying to find reviews written by fellow readers who provide spoilers. Except, of course, everyone is being kind and staying as spoiler […]

An AI-assisted review experiment

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

by 5 Comments

Edited to add this PSA: please see below for the to-be-official stance on use of AI in Cannonball–tl;dr the CBR board has determined based on this experience and like, *waves* all of this, that AI reviews don’t fit the ethos of what CBR is all about. I can attest to this–I probably spent 2-3x as long end to end doing this one review, but felt about a tenth as satisfied as I usually do writing a review! Hopefully everyone felt the extreme experimentation vibe of […]

:A Review

Cahokia Jazz: A Novel by Francis Spufford

by Leave a Comment

I picked up this book entirely based on the strength of Francis Spufford’s Red Plenty—a novel that’s hard to categorize, summarize, or explain. This is a little easier to place: it’s a 1920s crime noir detective mystery set in an alternate version of the US where the Native American population retained power due to a less virulent strain of smallpox brought by the colonizers. The result is three distinct regions: a version of the US we recognize, a southern area run by the KKK, and Cahokia—a […]

anyone else want a “how fascism fell” reminder?

The Third Reich at War, 1939-1945 by Richard J. Evans

by Leave a Comment

If you’ve made it to this final installment of Evans’ trilogy on the Third Reich, you’re probably already a fan of his style. Having diligently followed the chain of events from Kaiser Wilhelm to Hitler, this book picks up the story where the Nazi regime is at war—essentially, the beginning of the end. And while we know the ending, it’s still shocking to read just how close Hitler and Germany came to winning early on through sheer audacity (long before the war really got going). […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo