Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Probably best to skip the mystery dumplings at the night market

Time Loops & Meet Cutes by Jackie Lau

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4.5 stars Thank you to Netgalley, Jackie Lau and Atria Books for this ARC. My opinions are my own. Noelle Tom feels like she’s in a rut. She’s underappreciated at work, she doesn’t have much of a social life to speak of, and she’s pretty much given up on love and dating. Having worked late yet another Friday evening, Noelle goes to the night market and buys some dumplings from a mysterious old woman who claims they will “give her what she needed most”. Unfortunately, […]

Two engaging but not perfect romances

Four weekends and a funeral by Ellie Palmer

In a Jam by Kate Canterbary

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I read these two romances back in March, and for both, I enjoyed them while also not loving them. It mostly felt like nitpicky character reason that did make sense in context but also maybe just went a bit further than needed? 4 weekends and a funeral Alison and Sam dated briefly but ended things on good terms shortly before he died in an accident. At the funeral, Alison discovers that Sam’s parents think she is still the girlfriend and goes along with it at […]

Groundhog Day with a food scene

Time Loops and Meet Cutes by Jackie Lau

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This is only my second Jackie Lau novel (I think, if Goodreads is accurate). I actually quite liked the other novel I read by her and yet … I don’t know, sometimes, you just have those authors that you check out, you enjoy but they just also don’t quite pull you in enough to make you want to go read everything else they have written, for whatever the reason. I generally like a good time loop story, though (hello Palm Springs, Groundhog Day and that […]

A romance about audiobook narrators, by a queen of audiobook narration

Thank You for Listening by Julia Whelan

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Sewanee (pronounced Swanie, several characters call her Swan) Chester was a child actress on a popular sitcom, but a serious injury while filming her big break as an adult led to her losing an eye and becoming permanently scarred, so now she makes her living as an audiobook narrator. While it may not be as glamorous as acting, she’s very good at it and has won several awards. Early in her career, she also narrated romance novels, but now her cynicism makes it too hard […]

A romance celebrating Black artists

Reel by Ryan Kennedy

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This was such a beautifully written romance novel though I did start getting anxious over halfway through because things were going too well and I didn’t want to see what 3rd act obstacles Ryan threw at them. This one is a bit on the heavier side for romance as chronic illness plays a large role but I quite enjoyed it. Canon, the leading man, is a famous director who broke onto the scene with a documentary about his late mother’s journey with MS. Since then, […]

“Last week I considered going jogging in flip-flops just to remind myself how sex sounds.”

The True Love Experience by Christina Lauren

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StoryGraph Easy Reading Challenge 25: A book with two authors Felicity “Fizzy” Chen loves her life and career as a romance writer. The problem is that she’s suffering from a bad case of writers’ block, and when she’s asked about her personal life in interviews or author panels, it’s not like she can confess to never actually having been in love, right? A romance writer should surely have experienced romantic love at some point? With all of her friends happily coupled up, she’s also getting […]



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