Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Another Ilona Andrews book I absolutely loved. Are you surprised? (double bingo)

Emerald Blaze by Ilona Andrews

by Leave a Comment

4.5 stars #CBR12 Bingo: Green   Spoiler warning! This is the fifth book total in the Hidden Legacy series, and the second book about Catalina Baylor. This review may spoil details from previous books in the series. If you want to start at the very beginning, the book you want is Burn for Me. If you want to start with Catalina’s books, the first book is Sapphire Flames.    It’s been about six months since the end of the last book, where Catalina Baylor made a very unfortunate, iron-clad deal with […]

Forgive Us Our Happiness

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky

by 2 Comments

If someone were to ask me which book by Dostoevsky would be the best to start with, the most obvious answer would definitely be Crime and Punishment, and indeed it is the first book by him that I myself read as a teenager. It is also the one that hooked me, and that would end up making me read almost all of his works in the following years. Still, Dostoevsky really wrote five great novels, and each one can be recommended as a perfect starting […]

“Money always decides whether things get better or worse. They never stay the same.”

The Reckless Oath We Made by Bryn Greenwood

by 5 Comments

In early January, I had a lot of gift cards to spend. I have my birthday, my anniversary, and Christmas in December, and I always get at least one card for my favorite bookstore, One More Page Books…and this year I think I got two or three. On the day I went in to shop, I didn’t have anything particular in mind, so I just went over to the “Staff Picks — Best of the Year” display, and picked up a few books I hadn’t […]

A late 80s-romance novel helps me cross off another square (double bingo)

Viscount Vagabond by Loretta Chase

by Leave a Comment

2.5 stars #CBR12 Bingo: Shelfie   Official book description: Catherine Pelliston simply would not abide by her father’s wishes and marry the slovenly Lord Browdie. But her escape through the streets of London only seemed to lead her from bad to worse. First, she was robbed. And then, her supposed “rescue” by a kindly old woman stranded Catherine in a bordello — where the handsome Viscount Rand was intent on sampling her wares! A dire predicament indeed-especially when the dashing aristocrat decided to assume full […]

Stone and Ash and Magic

The Obelisk Gate by NK Jemisin

by Leave a Comment

The more of Jemisin’s works I read, the more I fall in love with her craft. The Obelisk Gate is book two in her Broken Earth Trilogy, and even though I’m normally not the biggest fan of any middle book in a trilogy, I enjoyed this book even more than her first one. We pick up the story almost exactly where we left off in book one, and follow Essun as she pivots her focus from finding her daughter, Nassun, to assisting the orogenes of Castrima […]

I’m just here for Lisbeth

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

by 1 Comment

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was my Mocha Girls Read book club pick for May with the theme of Scandanavian Mystery. When the original book came out, I was aware of the hype but opted for the film adaptations. I enjoy all incarnations, so I figured the novel would grip me. Instead, I found myself getting a bit impatient with the plot when it didn’t focus on the titular “The Girl”. The story follows a journalist named Mikael Blomkvist who has been hired by […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo