Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Featured Review Archive

These reviews, which were promoted in CBR social media, on our homepage, and in Pajiba Love, appear below by review publication date, not by date featured.

 

“a hobbastyu was both a turbulent sea and a great difficulty, or dilemma”

Clear by Carys Davies

by 1 Comment

The idea of a historical fiction novel that sends you repeatedly running to Wikipedia usually sounds like a hefty tome, some kind of sweeping epic like Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries. But Carys Davies’s Clear is a tiny little jewel box of a novel, not even 200 pages long (or just a hair over three hours for the audiobook I listened to). But Davies takes you into the Scottish clearances, the 1843 schism in the Scottish Presbyterian church, Scots dialect, the dying Norse-derived languages of the northernmost […]

Greek gods + The Hunger Games, but so much worse

Blood of Hercules by Jasmine Mas

by 3 Comments

I am in a bit of a slump, and this seemed passably interesting. The cover is pretty and Hoopla tells me it’s popular? Set in the future, which, it must be said, sucks. Titans have emerged (from where?) to murder humanity, prompting Spartans (collective name for Greek Olympians) to reveal themselves after millennia in hiding in order to dispatch them. Spartans—you and I know them as Olympians-have their own internal conflict which forces the losing district (Chthonics) to serve as the Titan death squad. Anyway, […]

A Dark Academia Masterpiece

Blood Over Bright Haven by M. L. Wang

by 1 Comment

I literally just finished reading this, and wow — what a compelling read! I learned from reading Wang’s first book, Sword of Kaigen, that she is not afraid to do terrible things to her characters or to break your heart without fully mending it, and she does that again here. This dark academia novel primarily follows Sciona, who early in the novel becomes the first female High Mage of the city of Tiran. There’s a lot of sexism in this world and she is not […]

Project managers and analysts are the ones really living the good life

The Ex Vows by Jessica Joyce

by 1 Comment

There are very few books I can think of that have, in my opinion, the perfect first chapter. The Ex Vows opens in a flashback, but as a memory rather than dropping us into the exact time. The narrating character (Georgia) misremembers, corrects herself, and even rewrites history to be more in line with what eventually happens between her and her love interest (Eli). It leaves you with a need to know more, to find out what happens to these people after their incredibly charming […]

“If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me? I owe it so much.”

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

by 3 Comments

When I started writing this review, I could not have told you what made me put 84, Charing Cross Road onto my to-read list back in August 2015. So, then I did what I usually do in that scenario and checked the Cannonball Read archives to see if there was a review that launched it onto my list and sure enough, there were two in 2015 – one by scootsa1000 and another by yesknopemaybe that sealed the deal for me. While it took me 9 years […]

How did it get made?

MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios by Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales, Gavin Edwards

by 1 Comment

For lovers of Lord of the Rings, you’ll be aware of the cache that comes with having not only seen the extended editions (multiple times), but to know of the many stories and background trivia that comes with the trilogy. I am 100% this person. The one who, on a visit to Disneyland, bores her comrades with park trivia. The one who pops up in office convos with random pop trivia, or obscure factoids about random nonsense. Some may find it annoying, and I couldn’t […]



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