Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

You’re my beloved skitstövel (sh*t boot).

Ship Wrecked by Olivia Dade

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  Ship Wrecked starts with orgasms and then becomes a slow burn. Olivia Dade’s Spoiler Alert series has centered around a Game of Thrones-esque tv series called Gods of the Gates. In Spoiler Alert and All the Feels, we’ve seen Maria and Peter, two of the actors, flirt and banter in cast interviews and group chats. I try not to develop expectations about how a book is going to go, but even so, I was not expecting Peter and Maria’s journey to relationship. There’s one particular moment […]

Paradise Lost

Even Though I Knew the End by C.L. Polk

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Even Though I Knew the End is a gorgeous, intense, tight rope 3 1/2 hour listen. Set in a slightly alternate, puritanical 1930s or 40s Chicago, C.L. Polk weaves together magic, gritty noir, Heaven, Hell, love, and grief. It’s both spare and lush with just enough detail to give the world texture and context. Women are second class citizens and being queer is dangerous. Helen Brandt sold her soul ten years ago and her payment is about to come due. She has worked as a […]

I might not know what you are feeling. But I know grief.

The Alchemy of Sorrow by Sarah Chorn, Virginia McClain

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The Alchemy of Sorrow: A Fantasy & Sci-fi Anthology of Grief and Hope was a gamble because I was only familiar with one author, Intisar Khanani. I like anthologies because I get to explore authors I haven’t read before in short bites. I love Khanani enough that I knew her story would be worth the whole anthology.  I did love her “Twice-Domesticated Dragons,” and I also loved several of the others stories as well. I read a lot of advance reader copies, which means that […]

Vinh not being sure of something was kind of like concrete turning into Jell-O.

Ex Appeal by Cathy Yardley

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Ex Appeal is the much anticipated (by me) third instalment of the Ponto Beach Reunion series.  In the first two books, Love, Comment, Subscribe and Gouda Friends, we’ve seen Vinh Doan and Emily MacDonald in the background. They were high school sweethearts who went off to college together and then Vinh broke up with Emily when she needed him most. If you are a longtime romance reader, you know they are definitely getting back together. It’s a classic set-up. In the years since their break-up, […]

I loved this book, and then I found the recipes at the end and now I LOVE this book.

Before I Let Go by Kennedy Ryan

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This is a ridiculously silly thing to be excited about, but there are recipes at the end of this book! We get to read about all this great food and then, we can make it ourselves. I loved this book and it made me cry and laugh and ache, but then I got to the end, and those recipes are like my own personal happily ever after. This is one of the best depictions of food as love and healing that I’ve read. Before I […]

If you feel like washing your meat is keeping you closer to your ancestors, wash on, Sis

Diasporican: A Puerto Rican Cookbook by Illyanna Maisonet

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I will read anything Illyanna Maisonet wants to write. She is like a breath of salt-tinged fresh air in a stuffy room. Reading Diasporican: A Puerto Rican Cookbook is a no-brainer for me. I want her to have the resources to write whatever she wants to write. On almost every page of Diasporican I found myself muttering, “I love her.” This is one of the most quotable cookbooks I’ve read. I cannot share as many quotes as I’d like because I’m working from an advance reader […]



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