Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“The wind blows itself out, and dawn comes to the window cold and still in a clear gold-green.”

The Searcher by Tana French

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I waited to pick up a Tana French novel even though she is highly regarded around these parts. Late last year I commented on narfna’s review that I was hesitant to pick up another author who writes an ongoing series (I’ve got the Inspector Gamache books to contend with) and that’s true enough. But I think another component was that I knew French wrote gritty, hard-boiled crime novels and I just wasn’t in the mood for those, no matter the quality of the writing (the […]

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 […]

Hallmark-style sweet tea

Sweet Tea by Piper Huguley

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CBR13Bingo: Home This book is exactly as sweet as the title suggests! It’s an interracial romance between an intellectual property lawyer and the filmmaker who’s trying to preserve old southern recipes. It does lean heavily on the “big city person returns to her small town roots” Hallmark premise, so be warned if that’s not your thing. After a tragic accident upended her life as a young teen, Althea left Milford and her remaining family behind her. Years of boarding school, college and hard work later, […]

I keep my heart safely between the pages of this book…

Overseas by Beatriz Williams

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Kate Wilson thinks her life is pretty normal. She just wants to finish her internship at Sterling Bates so she can head off to business school and become a commodities trader in her own right. Enter Julian Lawrence—Sterling Bates client and mysterious billionaire hedgie. Despite a rocky beginning, Julian can’t seem to get enough of Kate. He’s using the L word before they’ve even had their first date. Suddenly her life is anything but normal. The world slides sideways—Kate is fired for alleged insider trading, […]

All the Names in the World!

Rumpelstiltskin by The Brothers Grimm

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CBR Bingo – Book Club. I saw this on the Cannon Book Club fairy tale list and decided to read one of the original fairytales. It’s been a long time! I’m sure we all know the tale, but here it is anyway! “Rumpelstiltskin” by the Brothers Grimm is about a little man who helps a beautiful young woman spin straw into gold for an avaricious king. In exchange, the man asks for a reward. For his final request, he demands the maiden give him her […]

Charming with Dark Undertones

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

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CBR Bingo – People. The cover of the edition I read has silhouettes of the main characters under a tree. Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a short but fantastic novel about a schoolteacher and a small group of girl students known as the Brodie set. Miss Brodie is an unconventional, independent teacher with definite ideas of how the students should behave and what they should think. She exhorts the girls to comport themselves with dignity while oversharing about her love life. […]



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