Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Four weddings, but not a funeral in sight

Four Weddings to Fall in Love by Jackie Lau

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This was an ARC that I received from the author. It has not affected my opinions or swayed me in any way, although I will say that I also pre-ordered the book and paid for a copy with my own money, because Jackie Lau is a worthy auto-buy contender. Max Mok meets Kim Sun at a wedding and is smitten with her from the first. She clearly likes him enough to invite him to her hotel room after the reception, but Max isn’t really used […]

The Winter of Our Discontent

Bliss Montage by Ling Ma

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In Bliss Montage, a woman and her family live in the same house as her one hundred ex-boyfriends, women trapped in a toxic friendship take a drug that makes themselves invisible, and a pregnant woman must caretake the protruding arm of her fetus as she awaits giving birth to the rest of it. The distance from everyday life that fantasy brings us can be used to magnify reality, and Ling Ma takes takes ample advantage of this in Bliss Montage, a short story collection that examines […]

50 Years of Feminism

50 Years of Ms.: The Best of the Pathfinding Magazine That Ignited a Revolution by Katherine Spillar, Eleanor Smeal, Gloria Steinem

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Seminal articles, pieces of fiction, and letters to the editor compiled from fifty years’ worth of Ms. magazine provide us with a glimpse into the last half-century of the feminist movement. For someone living in the 21st century, I have a hefty digital collection of midcentury magazines. I find it fascinating to immerse myself in the minutiae of such a different period, seeing how the world was expected to look at the time. I even like reading the advertisements! I haven’t read any old editions of […]

The night of all nights

Night of Lyons by Chasity Bowlin, Ruth A. Casie, Lynne Connolly, Sandra Sookoo, C.H. Admirand, Sara Adrien, Belle Ami, Abigail Bridges, Jenna Jaxon, Aurrora St. James

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Many a Regency hero and heroine will meet their match at the masquerade ball held tonight in the Lyon’s Den, an infamous gambling hall. A Lyon With No Name (Chasity Bowlin) This was a solid start to the collection, with the tried-and-true pairing of wickedness and innocence being refreshed by William’s awareness that he must pull his affairs together for Ellie and his estate’s sake. The Lady and the Lyon’s Scandal (Ruth A. Casie) Eva is a clever character, and I enjoyed how she and […]

The Loyalty Test

Stand With Me, Earl by Kate Archer

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Viola is drawn to Roland, the Earl of Baderston, but she wants him to prove his loyalty before she’ll wed him. However, things go much farther than she expects when the rumors she starts about herself get out of hand… This is the third book in A Very Fine Muddle series, which are Regency romances about a very eccentric, unworldly family of debutantes. In my review of the second book I wondered how the author would pull off a heroine whose chief distinguishing feature thus […]

The Faces That Launched a Thousand Political Conflicts

Medieval Royal Mistresses: Mischievous Women who Slept with Kings and Princes by Julia A. Hickey

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In an era where women were constrained by their sex and status, royal mistresses managed to have outsized influence of English history through their connections with kings and the children that they bore them. As I got into this book, it occurred to me that when you learn about history, the various favorites of kings and queens are left out except in very few instances where the story would make no sense without their inclusion (Anne Boleyn of course comes to mind). Instead their illegitimate […]



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