Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Moving Distractions. Or, When Ronnie got Salty

Fair Game: The Incredible Untold Story of Scientology in Australia by Steve Cannane

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I’ve been moving around a lot in the last few years, and I’ve developed some little rituals over the process. My last move was only a month ago, and  like so many of my moves, it involved extended amounts of time dicking around with Ikea furniture and getting rather frustrated. I have an audiobook especially for that task. It must have been eight or nine years ago now, but I had spend the best part of an afternoon trying to put a damned bed together […]

Who’s Holding The Phone?

Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton

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I had a couple of reasons for finally trying to track down Boy Swallows Universe. A friend of mine had been asking about Australian Lit last year, and and I had to shamefully admit to her that I hadn’t read this one yet. Then I heard an adaption was going to be released on Netflix. Then I listened to an interview with the author who mentioned the semi-biographical elements to it. (Richard Fidler strikes again.) And that’s the bit that kind of tipped me over; […]

Thunder Down Under

Lapse by Sarah Thornton

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Read as part of CBR16Bingo: scandal. The main character is on the run to this small town after a fiasco in her past life and has to deal with a fiasco in her current one.  I grabbed this one maybe because of Ted Lasso? I don’t remember but I feel like I read somewhere that this was pitched as a Ted Lasso-esque coach solving a mystery. That’s not really the case though. Clementine Jones, though she is similarly running from her past, is not the […]

Gone, but not forgotten

Exiles by Jane Harper

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On a warm spring night, during a busy festival in South Australia’s wine region, a six week old baby sleeps in her pram. Her mother is nowhere to be seen.  A year on, Kim Gillespie is still nowhere to be found. Investigator Aaron Falk, who works for Australia’s financial crimes department, heads down to old friends for the baptism of their young son, but as he meets their extended group of relatives, friends and acquaintances, he starts to be drawn into the mystery. It can […]

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror

Pointe of Pride by Chloe Angyal

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I’ve been waiting for Pointe of Pride since shortly after Pas de Don’t came out. It did not disappoint. I had so much fun reading.  Carly and Nick have strong Elizabeth Bennet/Fitzwilliam Darcy vibes with their prides and their prejudices (masking insecurities) acting as barriers. They have a meet disaster and initially show each other their worst sides. And then Carly hears Nick talking about her in a less than complimentary way. Neither is in a good place emotionally at the start of the book. Carly feels like […]

Don’t Let Your Midlife Crisis Ruin Your Children’s Lives

Wavewalker by Suzanne Heywood

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When Suzanne’s parents tell her that their family is going to live on a boat and sail around the world, they sell it to her and everyone as the adventure of a lifetime. But the reality of it is much more grim, with constant instability and little care for the children’s education or futures. Talk about making your midlife crisis your children’s problem! Having seen an uptick of chatter online about parents gaming the homeschooling system to let their kids run wild, it was interesting […]



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