Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Hollywood intrigue, flipping houses, graphic novels, and romance!

Tribute by Nora Roberts

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Bingo Square: Red Cilla McGowan is the granddaughter of Janet Hardy, a legendary actress who died from an overdose – suspected suicide – before Cilla was born. A former child star, Cilla is sick of Hollywood and all it has to offer. She manages to persuade her mother (who is still stuck in the Hollywood machine) to sell her Hardy’s old farmhouse so she can do it up, and maybe find herself a home in the process. While gutting the property, Cilla meets her neighbour, […]

Yes! This is What I Was Looking For

How to Machine Sew: Techniques and Projects for the Complete Beginner by Susie Johns

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BINGO: Orange Best for: People who have never used a sewing machine. In a nutshell: Author Johns provide an extremely basic overview of how to use a sewing machine, and then follows it up with projects to practice on. Worth quoting: N/A Why I chose it: After the last book, I did a bit more research before clicking purchase. This one looked to actually explain how to use a sewing machine. Review: It’s exciting when a book meets one’s needs and desires exactly, and this […]

“My Happily Ever After was a strand of strung-together happy-for-nows, extending back not to just a year ago, but to thirty years before.”

Beach Read by Emily Henry

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Beach Read is an odd example of a charming romance that I liked a lot, even though I found that I didn’t much like the two main characters. Romance novelist January is reeling — her father died, her boyfriend broke up with her, and she found out (AT HER FATHER’S FUNERAL) that her parents’ marriage wasn’t the perfect love story that she always imagined. She has a book deadline coming up, but she has no ideas and nowhere to live, so she moves into her […]

“Insidious, these false versions of superiority and ease we project onto other families: how often they blind us to the surer comforts of our own.”

The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger

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Holy hell. Did this book make me forget about quarantine and the hell that is our lives in this country right now. I guess there’s nothing better for misery than reading about people that have it worse than you, and that they have no one to blame but themselves. This book was insane. I hated pretty much every single character (INCLUDING CHILDREN), and yet couldn’t put it down. From the opening quote, I knew I was in for a ridiculous story: There is so tantalizing […]

“Hard truths can drive people apart. But great art can bring them back together.”

The Editor by Steven Rowley

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I am certainly not having any trouble with reading right now. I’ve read some absolutely amazing (and some that were just meh) books since March, mostly thanks to this group and to the good folks over at One More Page Books. They deliver! But writing has been a challenge. After a full day of editorial work, I just don’t want to sit down with my laptop and write. Even when I’ve read the most amazing book and want the whole world to know about it. […]

“Every Time Something Doesn’t Happen, It Means Something Else Can”

What If A Fish by Anika Fajardo

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While I’m not usually a reader of middle-grade fiction, this debut novel came across my Facebook feed, as one of my cohorts from my MFA program was its editor! I bought it immediately and was so charmed by this adorable story. What if A Fish follows Little Eddie Aguado, an eleven-year-old Colombian American who feels neither Colombian or American. As he struggles to find his place in the world, he comes across a fishing medal owned by his late-father that sets him on an adventure […]



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