Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I should read more Susanna Kearsley

The King's Messenger by Susanna Kearsley

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StoryGraph Easy Reading Challenge 2025: All Alone – Read a stand-alone book Thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for this ARC. My opinions are my own. It is 1613 and Prince Henry, James I’s eldest son and heir has tragically died. Rumours whisper that it might not have been by natural causes. Queen Anna is distraught, and King James is determined to punish the guilty. Andrew Logan is one of the king’s messengers and he’s tasked with going to Scotland to apprehend Sir David Moray, […]

“Four legs good, two legs bad”

Animal Farm by George Orwell

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Nowhere Books Bingo 25: Banned Book Buzzword Cover Challenge 25: Cover featuring an animal On Manor Farm, somewhere in England, an old boar gathers all the animals in the barn and makes a powerful speech about how animals suffer at the hands of humans and should rise up and take power for themselves. Shortly after his death, the animals of Manor Farm do just that – they violently fight back when Farmer Jones and his farmhands try to control them and chase the farmer, his […]

The Fatal Flaw of a Single Drop

Fauna by Denise Robins

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Fauna is stolen away from her village in Africa and enslaved at twelve – but her mixed blood offers her a greater chance of a happy life in England, even though it comes with its own specific dangers too. This is a bit of a hodgepodge review, because this is the omnibus edition of a trio of books following Fauna and her descendants. Originally published in the 1950s, the books have a for-their-time sympathetic treatment of the mixed-race Fauna and her descendants, even if that […]

“I must make up my mind which is right – society or I”

Et dukkehjem (A Doll's House) by Henrik Ibsen

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I don’t know if a spoiler warning for a nearly 150-year-old play is necessary – but I will be revealing significant plot points when writing about this historical drama, so if you want to remain unspoiled, go read the play (it’s only three acts, it’s a relatively quick read) or watch a dramatisation, and come back when you’re done. Nora and Torvald Helmer are a middle-class couple living in Christiania (what Oslo was named for a few centuries in the before times) in the late […]

She made sure it was not a silent night

Rachel Carson's Wonder-Filled World : How the Scientist, Writer, and Nature Lover Changed the Environmental Movement by Kate Hannigan

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This poetic biography of Rachel Carson covers the basic facts, but also gives a romantic twist to how her personality, adventures and contributions were. There are multiple sections where the five senses come into play and we learn what she sees, hears, smells, feels, and tastes. They could be literal but mostly metaphorical.  Rachel Carson’s Wonder-Filled World : How the Scientist, Writer, and Nature Lover Changed the Environmental Movement by Kate Hannigan and illustrated by Katie Hickey (which I read via an online reader copy […]

The King is Dead and Secrets Will Roll

The King Is Dead by Benjamin Dean

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Taken from a review found online:  Sometimes I find it really hard to rate a book, and The King is Dead is one of them. A lot of my friends had already read it and almost unanimously gave it three stars. Their conclusion: a nice story, but … a bit boring and a rushed ending, a fun read but off pacing, a solid book but lacking subtlety, you name it. And I can understand them all. And still … I found The King Is Dead […]



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