Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Fantastic witchy YA!

How to Succeed in Witchcraft by Aislinn Brophy

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I got an arc of Aislinn Brophy’s upcoming <u>Spells to Forget Us</u> so being me, I decided to read her debut first, and this was phenomenal. Shay is in her junior year and burning the candle at both ends in the hopes of wining the Brockton scholarship, a scholarship for her school that would pay for college tuition and basically ensures she’d be able to go to a licensing college. There is so much good commentary on access and privilege and the American dream through […]

I have to sing about the book I read

The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown

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What if the trope about every book being a new adventure happened literally? This is what happens in The Book of Doors. Cassie Andrews lives an unassuming life working in a bookstore when she is given a strange book called The Book of Doors. She soon discovers that, while in possession of the book, she can open a door into any place she can imagine. At first, she and her best friend Izzy enjoy going on instant adventures by simply opening the front door to […]

I’m Starting To Realize I Love Sentient Houses and Fictional Footnotes

Starling House by Alix E. Harrow

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Alix E. Harrow has done it again. She is such a skillful writer, and I raced through this book to see discover the answers behind Starling House and see how everything would end. The book is told from dual perspectives. Most of it is first person narration by Opal, a woman in her 20s living in Eden, Kentucky, and trying to keep her and her brother Jasper afloat. Her one and only goal is to get him out of Eden. The second perspective is 3rd […]

Push their faces together and make them kiss already

Assistant to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

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When her gaze finally reached his face, she had to swallow a sigh and bury it where nobody would ever find it. But how could she help it? His jaw was sharp and angled enough that it could be a weapon itself, strong enough to make her insides quiver. Don’t let him quiver your insides, Evie. ― Hannah Nicole Maehrer, Assistant to the Villain When she cannot find a job, Evie stumbles into the new role of the assistant to The Villain. Not “a” villain […]

“Zahra and I were complete; we were the sun and the wind, the sky and the earth, life and death, above the world and untouchable.”

The Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee

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I was a big fan of Fonda Lee’s Green Bone Saga, so when I stumbled on this novella, I was thrilled! In the sprawling Green Bone Saga, Lee crafted a dynasty in which 10s of key actors loved and hated and fought and died over several countries and thousands of pages. In The Untethered Sky, Lee narrows the scope to a single girl and her bird – well, never her bird, but the bird that she tends. I didn’t read the blurb on this book, […]

A Blast from the Past

The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft

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I first read Lovecraft as a teen and was instantly smitten.  The Rats in the Wall?  OMG!  So creepy!  So it’s fun, lo these many years later, to read Lovecraft again, seeing a little more behind the curtain, as it were. But I was amused to find the setting of most of these sinister tales in this collection were in obscure bits of the mid-Atlantic states (not the standard setting of gothic tales of horror) such as upstate New York.  OK, I’ll give you Rip […]



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