Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

My hypothesis was that I would love this and now my conclusion is that I really fucking did.

The Love Hypothesis (The Love Hypothesis, #1) by Ali Hazelwood

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I was wondering where all my five star reads were in January, and it turns out they were hiding in the first week of February. PhD graduate student Olive spontaneously plants a smooch on notoriously mean and horrible Professor Adam Carlsen in order to convince her best friend that it’s okay for her to date Olive’s ex (don’t worry, he doesn’t supervise her in any way!) and fake dating ensues. That’s really all you need to know, to be honest. Objectively, this is not a […]

“Everyone loved being together and just fangirling over whatever they were reading.”

Meet Cute Club by Jack Harbon

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Last week the Twitter Discourse around Romance focused on fallout from a tweet by Jack Harbon about the intent of those outside a marginalized community writing exclusively about that community (he was specifically referring to women, often white women, writing only about queer men). Separate from the actual conversations that happened around that initial tweet, it made me realize that while I’ve read queer romance by queer women, non-binary authors, and those who identify as genderqueer I had not yet read a m/m romance written […]

The way these characters can understand what isn’t being said, while being delightfully snarky is just the best.

And They Lived Happily Ever After by Therese Beharrie

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Representation on the page matters, and while finding representation that feels exactly like you can be some of the most affirming experiences out there, finding representation that speaks to a component of your life that isn’t exactly how you experience it is also incredibly important. Beharrie includes in her acknowledgements that a lot of what we see on the page in And They Lived Happily Ever After draws from her own experiences with Anxiety, and as usual, when an author so very obviously writes from […]

Another Baking Romance

Donut Fall in Love by Jackie Lau

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After the debacle of Always, in December I decided to make sure the next thing I read didn’t make me angry (don’t worry, future angry reviews will come – and soon –  I just usually like to give myself 24 hours to get eloquent with the rage) so I put down the two books I was reading and went back to an ARC that I had not been able to get to before the deadline (my apologies to the fine folks at NetGalley and Berkley) […]

Starting the year with a sure-fire hit

A Very Beery New Year by Jackie Lau

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Encouraged by his mother to socialise more, introverted software developer Gerald Nakamura goes to his local craft beer bar to sit by the bar, reading a book, not really interacting with anyone except the serving staff. He especially likes exchanging a few words with the pretty and vivacious bartender Kelsey.   Kelsey lives with her rather exasperating grandmother (who just discovered Tik Tok and is determined to become a viral sensation) and works at the bar until she can find something more suitable to her […]

Like a Hallmark movie in book form, and all that implies.

The Holiday Swap by Maggie Knox

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I feel badly about the review I’m about to write, because it betrays a cynicism I like to squash when possible, but I feel like this book was published (and picked by Book of the Month) because publishers knew it would sell, and not because it was anything special. This is similar to the way that Hallmark Christmas movies are cheaply made, poorly written, and at best acted with mediocrity, but scratch a specific itch in a specific type of person that watches them anyway. […]



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