Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I wish I was better at baking

Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake by Alexis Hall

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CBR13 Bingo: Libations (the whole setting of the book is a televised baking show, so there are a lot of both sweet and savoury baked treats in the story and featured on the cover) Official book description: Following the recipe is the key to a successful bake. Rosaline Palmer has always lived by those rules—well, except for when she dropped out of college to raise her daughter, Amelie. Now, with a paycheck as useful as greaseproof paper and a house crumbling faster than biscuits in tea, she’s […]

“Is there anything more beautiful than living light?”

Phosphoresence: On awe, wonder and things that sustain you when the world goes dark by Julia Baird

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CBRBingo:  Self-help This book has a glorious cover that is well-matched to the contents.  Julia Baird – historian, journalist, TV presenter – blends  personal experience, scientific research, philosophy and theology to outline her argument that instead of asking how we stay happy we should ask “how do we survive, stay alive or even bloom when the world goes dark, when we are, for instance, overwhelmed by illness or heartbreak, loss or pain?”. Beginning with a discussion of literal phosphoresence – light released by natural substances […]

“All any of us can do – is work to be something positive instead. That is a choice that every sapient must make every day of their life. The universe is what we make of it. It’s up to you what part you will play.”

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

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CBR 13 Bingo:  Book Club – Cannonball Book Club, I wish I had read this last year instead of An Unkindness of Ghosts Last year many of y’all raved about The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, I seem to recall comparisons to “Firefly”, and I agree!  I also saw  similarities with “Farscape”, a fish out of water story with a planet bound human now exploring space aboard a ship with aliens.  If neither of those TV shows are a frame of reference for you, this […]

Clytemnestra’s story

Helen Had a Sister: A Tale of Ancient Greece (formerly Princess of Sparta) by Penelope Haines

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Cbr13bingo Mythic I was excited to see the “Mythic” square on this year’s bingo card. I do enjoy myths and there are so many excellent re-tellings out there, including Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls, Madeline Miller’s Song of Achilles and Miller’s Circe. Penelope Haines’ Helen Had a Sister, like these other novels, takes a lesser known female character from the Trojan War/Iliad and gives us her story. This time, it’s Clytemnestra (aka Nestra), a Spartan princess, older sister to Helen, wife of Agamemnon, […]

Heist gateway to YA fantasy

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

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CBRBingo – Gateway I haven’t read Bardugo’s Grisha trilogy, and I don’t think I will after the consensus at the CBR catch-up that the worldbuilding was let down by the execution.  But I loved Six of Crows, also set in Bardugo’s Grishaverse. So did many other Cannonballers, who have written a number of excellent reviews that free me from the need to focus on plot or character profiles in mine. This was an obvious choice for the Gateway Bingo square.  While most definitely a fantasy novel, set […]

What if Persephone was a jaded socialite and Hades was a broody cinnamon roll?

Neon Gods by Katee Robert

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CBR13 Bingo: Mythic (while this is pretty much a straight-up contemporary romance/erotica, the mythological influences are very much there throughout the book) This book was granted to me as an ARC through NetGalley in return for an honest review. It’s available now. Persephone Dimitriou is a society darling, living in the lap of luxury in a stylish highrise in the city of Olympus. Her mother is Demeter, head of one of the thirteen ruling houses and while she seems to care for her four daughters, […]



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