Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Time remembered does not flow smoothly at all”

The Truants by Kate Weinberg

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Jess is the middle child of a large, chaotic family and she feels largely ignored, so when she finally heads off to university, it comes as a relief. It takes her a while to find her groove, but then she meets her friends. There is glamorous, upper-crusty Georgie, attractive and steady Nick, and Georgie’s mysterious boyfriend Alec. Above all, there is Jess’s primary reason for her studies: teacher and author Lorna. Lorna has written a very successful and much-lauded novel called The Truants, and Jess […]

They Call It University

The It Girl by Ruth Ware

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Read as part of CBR17 Bingo: starts with I It’s really tough to go long on The It Girl because there are dozens of these types of what’s billed as “dark academia” thrillers and while this is better than most, it’s not really inspired. Y’know this genre by now: they usually involve a secret society, a group of friends, a dead body, and time jumps. Most are indistinguishable from one another. They’re fine if that’s your thing, not trying to yuck anyone’s yum. But you know what’s […]

“So much of her life had been about escaping, in dreams and books and out of windows, that she didn’t quite know how to stay.”

The Geographer's Map to Romance by India Holton

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Buzzword Cover Challenge 25: Monochrome CBR17 Bingo: Green (A book with a green cover) Official plot summary, because I finished the book in early April, and perimenopause is doing my powers of recall no favours: Professor Elodie Tarrant is an expert in magic disasters. Nothing fazes her—except her own personal disaster, that Professor Gabriel Tarrant, the grumpy, unfriendly man she married for convenience a year ago, whom she secretly loves. Gabriel is also an expert in magic disasters. And nothing fazes him either—except the walking, […]

Let’s Get Physical

Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

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Elsie is a theoretical physicist, stuck in a dead-end job she hates – teaching ungrateful students who keep emailing her day and night with excuses as to why they can’t meet their deadlines – while barely making ends meet. To get by, she works as a fake girlfriend for a company called Faux: men who are tired of their family members asking them when they’re going to find a girl, or men who need a plus-one for a corporate dinner, hire Elsie for the night. […]

“It may be said of some very old places, as of some very old books, that they are destined to be forever new. The nearer we approach them, the more remote they seem: the more we study them, the more we have yet to learn. “

Women in the Valley of the Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age by Kathleen Sheppard

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In the so-called Golden Age of Egyptology, it was men who were known world-wide as the archeologists and academics who wrestled the secrets of Ancient Egypt from the desert, carrying away much of what they found. In this book, Sheppard turns the spotlight on female Egyptologists, who had less recognition but were equally instrumental in the early days of the discipline. I’m not very familiar with Egyptology in the Gilded Age beyond Howard Carter’s famous “Yes, wonderful things!” and a vague understanding of how the […]

What makes a good leader? A just society?

The Will of the Many by James Islington

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Going in, I was expecting to like this but I don’t think I realized how much and how well it would hit themes that I generally tend to enjoy in fiction. Layers upon layers of intrigue and deceptions? A competitive academic setting? A detailed and intricately thought out magic/power system that is very logic based but doesn’t expect me to do the math behind it to get the gist? In some ways, the easiest comparison might be Red Rising but that’s also lazy and only […]



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