Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Seriously, my friend’s daughter is constantly misgendered because she favours clothes with dinosaurs on. EVERYONE KNOWS ALL DINOSAURS WERE BOYS AND THAT’S WHY THEY’RE EXTINCT.”

The Gender Games by Juno Dawson

by 4 Comments

Been sitting on this review for two months now, trying to land on a star rating, and how to articulate what I wanted to say. Ultimately, this is a good book that is part memoir and part feminist/social text about being transgender (with a focus on the UK), with some intersectional feminist ideas thrown in. It’s also written in a very colloquial, humorous style that is very much not the norm for these kinds of books. This is what threw me, because I couldn’t decide […]

“But I can have spiders in my head as long as I don’t let them consume me.” #CBRBingo – Happy

The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune

by 4 Comments

This was very sweet and I was extremely charmed by it. I didn’t end up giving it the fifth star, because shmoopsy mostly doesn’t work for me, and this did get a bit shmoopsy there at the end. (Shmoopsy is a technical term.) But overall, this was witty and so sweet and heartwarming, with a light undercurrent of dark humor. I loved the worldbuilding; the gentle bite of the satire combined so well with the big hearts of the main characters. Briefly (because I think […]

”My name, since you raise the topic, is Arthur Aloysius Kimberley de Brabazon Secretan. What would you do in my place?” “Leave the country … You poor bastard, you never stood a chance.” #CBRBingo – The Roaring 20’s

Slippery Creatures (The Will Darling Adventures, #1) by K.J. Charles

by 2 Comments

I loved everything about this. K.J. Charles is honestly spoiling me for other historical romance authors. There’s just something about her style (very detailed, historically accurate, flawed but compelling characters) that gets me right in the pleasure center. She also doesn’t just write in one time period or keep it to straight-up romance. She’s always messing around with spy fiction or mystery or golden age pulp (here and Think of England) or jewelry heists or homages to Georgette Heyer regency fiction. Sometimes many of these […]

“Fanfiction isn’t copying – it’s a celebration. One long party, from the first capital letter to the last full stop!”

One of Our Thursdays is Missing (Thursday Next, #6) by Jasper Fforde

by Leave a Comment

This was a good time, but I wasn’t ever able to lose myself in it. Seems fitting for a book I put on my Must Read list in 2011, and then didn’t get to for nine years. Jasper Fforde is always at worst just a good time for me, but sometimes his stuff ascends to the brilliant level; this just wasn’t that for me. This book, to my surprise, doesn’t even follow Thursday, but the written Thursday, formerly known as Thursday5, who failed her Jurisfiction […]

This was . . . weird.

Little Face (Spilling CID, #1) by Sophie Hannah

by Leave a Comment

Well, this was an experience. Disappointing, kind of bonkers, somehow still readable, lots of plot holes. It felt good to clean it off my TBR, and I’ll probably continue the series just because I’m curious about the bizarre relationship between the two detectives, but boy was it not what I was expecting. The premise of this book is a good one, one that I don’t think it really delivers on: a woman leaves her house for the first time since her two week old baby […]

I still don’t really know how I feel about this book. #CBRBingo – Red

Me Before You (Me Before You, #1) by Jojo Moyes

by Leave a Comment

This is one of those books that has the weight of expectations before you even pick it up. I bought it, actually at a Rainbow Rowell reading, right before the movie came out and everyone was talking about it all the time. Then my sister completely spoiled me for the plot (I asked her to; she wasn’t being a dick), and it sounded like something that would make me angry, so I just never got around to it. Flash forward to this year when the […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo