Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Schoolhouse Blizzard

Maddy and the Monstrous Storm by Julie Gilbert

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Maddy  is new to the prairie, but when she and her classmates are trapped in their schoolhouse by a ferocious blizzard, she must lead them all to safety. I’d first heard of the Schoolhouse Blizzard a year or two ago, when I read Melanie Benjamin’s The Children’s Blizzard, which similarly followed a schoolteacher and a group of schoolchildren who were trapped by the snow and had to fight to survive. This book covers the same topic and themes, but in a way that is more accessible […]

A Family History

Seven Aunts by Staci Lola Drouillard

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Author Drouillard tells the history of her family in recent generations through the lives of her seven aunts, four on her mother’s side and three on her father’s. I’ve always been interested in family histories, because no two are the same – that, and that there are generally a lot of secrets to uncover and I am a nosy sort of person. The fact that Seven Aunts is so wholeheartedly focused on the lives of the women in the family, tracing their parallels and divergences, made it […]

Road Trip Romance

No Rings Attached by Rachel Lacey

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Lia is on the hunt for a fake girlfriend to go to her brother’s wedding with her, and her best friend Rosie offers up her childhood friend Grace as an option. Sparks fly when the two meet, but Grace has a complicated past and is wary of relationships. This is the second book in the series, but reads perfectly well as a stand-alone. Though the story starts off with the fake-dating trope, things quickly heat up between the couple until they enter a complicated relationship […]

You’d Be Lucky to Have Your Body Found

The Vanishing Triangle by Claire McGowan

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In the 1990s, eight women vanished from the same area in Ireland. Their cases are officially unsolved, their bodies mostly undiscovered, their stories untold. The trouble with true crime is that, with so many ongoing cases, it is easy to overlook individual ones, especially when the trail has grown cold. In this book, the author strives to correct this by telling us the tales of these women and many others who were abducted and murdered in Ireland during this time. I found the writing engaging […]

Charity

The Appeal by Janice Hallett

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Poppy, the two-year-old granddaughter of the Haywoods, is diagnosed with an aggressive brain cancer, the whole community rallies around them to raise money for her treatment. But not all is as it seems in this little town, and when someone turns up dead on the night of the Fairway Players’ dress rehearsal, the truth must be uncovered. I picked up this book because someone here recommended it (thank you!) and because it’s been a while since I read a good epistolary novel. Certainly I’ve never […]

Debutante Runs for the Hills – Or Rather, Kent

The Sprinter by Kate Archer

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A group of highborn matrons, daughterless, start a society to sponsor young ladies through their seasons. Now it is the turn of Lady Heathway, whose chosen girl, Grace, is perfectly well-mannered and well-qualified – now if only she wouldn’t persist in running home! Archer has delivered again with an amusing Regency romance. This is the second book in the series and can be read as a standalone, though I enjoyed the humorous references to the first book. The main characters, Grace and George, are engaging, […]



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