Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Is It Coming Home?

The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman

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Read as part of CBR16 Bingo: fanfic. This is Lev Grossman’s take on the King Arthur mythos.  I don’t really know how to write this review because I loved it and I really want to give it my full throated endorsement. But there are things I loved about the book itself and things as an Arthur fan that I both loved and hated. Let’s start here: it’s one of the best things I’ve read in 2024. I liked the first Magicians book, less so the other two. […]

Second Chance Romance with the Backdrop of Many Weddings

Four Weddings to Fall in Love (Weddings with the Moks #1) by Jackie Lau

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Four Weddings to Fall in Love is the story of Max Mok and Kim Sung. Their meet-cute happens at mutual friends’ wedding and is quickly followed by a lackluster one-night stand. They both think the worst is behind them, and they can just move on and never see each other again. Except, there are three more weddings that summer that they are both attending (which happen to be Max’s first cousins and family friends of Kim’s). At the second wedding Max attempts to ameliorate his […]

“That was what it meant to have power, wasn’t it? You could simply destroy that which didn’t serve you.”

Seven Faceless Saints by M.K. Lobb

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CBR16 Bingo: Rage – Roz and her friends rage against the machine, trying to make a change in the very workings of their city-state. In a city-state where there is a sharp class divide between those blessed by the saints and those without magic, ex-lovers Roz and Damian must work together to uncover the identity of a ritual murderer. I don’t read as much fantasy as I used to nowadays – certainly I don’t read much YA fantasy anymore, especially from authors I am unfamiliar […]

He sang as if he knew me, in all my dark despair.

The Roommates (Three Player Grind #1) by Allyson Lindt

His Reluctant Omega Mate (Sweetwater Pack Book 1) by Jax Stuart

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CBRBingo16: Détente The characters want to be together but there are conditions to their union. Self-sacrifice, responsibility, and fear of the unknown hold them back. The Roommates (Three Player Grind #1) by Allyson Lindt With her daughters on vacation with their father, a reluctantly relieved Daria is ready to begin her week of relaxation in Hawaii. Since she will be gone, she offered her daughter’s swim coaches, Colin and Tanner, to stay in her home while their shared apartment is being fumigated. When her boss […]

A little grass in my coffee might actually sound …good?

Mooncakes & Milk Bread by Kristina Cho

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Bingo 6: Part 1 Mooncakes & Milk Bread is a cookbook emphasizing Chinese bakery baking. For those, like me, who don’t exactly know what that is, there are occasional 2-ish page interludes with stories and explanations. The reason such a thing qualifies for this square? About 80% of the recipes are extensions of one of four base recipes (the parts 1): milk bread, mooncake, steamed bun, and a variation on puff pastry. Basically, there are 4 part ones, followed by a lot of recipes that […]

Follow the nursery rhyme

Keisari Seisoo Palatsissaan (The Emperor Stands in His Palace) (1971) by Eeva Tenhunen

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Bingo square ‘Golden’: A famous author’s literary legacy looms large–and lucrative.  It is criminal that the work of Eeva Tenhunen (1937-2017) is out of print and untranslated. Described in her day (she published her novels between 1964 and 1987) as ‘Finland’s Agatha Christie’, you can see the influence of the English Golden Age of detective fiction: a country house and its rituals, a disruptive outsider, and a seething bubbling crucible of familial and marital tensions, class and political differences, and deep dark secrets. Tenhunen swaps […]



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