Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A hockey romance with less hockey and more coping with grief

Canadian Boyfriend by Jenny Holiday

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CBR16 Sweet Books: Exciting (I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time, and was VERY excited to get an ARC shortly before the release date. Nowhere Bingo: A book with multiple POVs This was an audio ARC from NetGalley. My opinions are my own.  When Aurora “Rory” Evans was a lonely teenager, she ran into a handsome Canadian hockey player while she was selling coffee at the Mall of America. She took his name and pretended to have an actual Canadian boyfriend, making […]

A burnt out Millennial medium and the ghost of her dead best friend solve crimes. Yes you should read it.

Grave Expectations (Grave Expectations, #1) by Alice Bell

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I knew as soon as I read the blurb for this one early in 2023 that it was going to be a book For Me. Sometimes I do turn out to be wrong about these things, but in this case I was very much right. I had such a good time with this book. (And I’ve had ridiculously good luck with mysteries this year, most of which are having fun with the traditional mystery format/genre). The premise here is that Claire is a thirty-something down-on-her-luck […]

“There is nothing wrong with being a monster.”

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

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?????? It’s been weeks now and I still don’t know what to make of this one. A very dark and weird take on The Little Mermaid story, with a cheeky little nod to Hans Christian Andersen even; mostly this was an exercise in imagery and I didn’t connect to the characters, but I can’t deny it has style. The mermaid here was essentially stolen from the sea, forced to marry a prince, had her tongue cut out, and then gave birth to daughters who then […]

Triple Cannonballing with fugitive Blanche, here to solve your murder mysteries and nose around until all your secrets are exposed.

Blanche on the Lam (Blanche White, #1) by Barbara Neely

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This was published in 1992 so it should have SO MANY more ratings on Goodreads than it does. It was very good! Mystery/crime junkies, consider this your notice. A fun series is waiting for you. There are only four books in it, and this is the first. And if you have KU or Audible, it’s free! I highly enjoyed the audiobook experience, if you are an audiobook person. The book opens with Blanche—who I now love with all my heart—sitting in court waiting to hear […]

Hi, it’s me, the worst book of the year.

Whalefall by Daniel Kraus

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I’m not mad just disappointed. Just kidding, I’m pretty mad. I’m going to say what many reviewers have said before me: This is not a book about a man who is swallowed by a whale and has to use science to get out alive. This is a book about a man (a teenager, actually, but more on that below) who has daddy issues real bad, and he happens to be swallowed by a whale also. The parts with the whale are few and far between—it […]

Look, I just want to give this author five stars but he makes it so difficult!

The Tyranny of Faith (Empire of the Wolf, #2) by Richard Swan

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Look, I may feel differently upon re-read, but this author cannot write romance to save his life. Both of these books so far have been made worse by his efforts in that department. His instincts are all wrong. In the first book, it was an underdeveloped and ill-advised “romance” between our narrator, Helena, the apprentice of famed Justice Sir Konrad Vonvalt, and some village rube who had zero personality. Here, it’s between Helena and Vonvalt himself and just UGH. NO. WHY. Luckily the romance never […]



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