Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“It’s good being the horror chick, sure, always standing away from the rest of the crowd, smoking bitter cigarette after better cigarette, she’d have it no other way, but it’s nice to make eye contact with someone else with a black heart, too, and then breath smoke out slow, like judgment.”

My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

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In one word: Frenetic Cannonball Read Bingo: Machines (I mean…it’s in the title!) All right, peeps. I’m here to tell you unequivocally that you need some Stephen Graham Jones in your life. Full stop. I am a casual horror fan. I cannot and do not watch horror TV or movies (nope nope nooooope) but do like reading horror. I’ve read a lot of the classics, but it’s been a hot minute since I took in something in from the genre. My first horror in a […]

“It’s a little broken down, sure, but isn’t it worth putting it back together?”

The Shaadi Set-Up by Lillie Vale

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CBR13Bingo: Fauna – the puppers! The adorableness of this cover! This is a tropey and cute book, full of second chance high school sweethearts and a bit of forced proximity, though not everything worked out for me. “There’s something about old things, right? Comforting favorites. A place in time you want to return to, revisit, like an old friend.” Rita and Milan have dated since they were fifteen, and now, after Milan’s first year of college, they’re finally getting to see each other again on […]

Another small-town, second-chance Christmas romance

No Ordinary Christmas by Belle Calhoune

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It’s no secret that I love second chance romances and holiday romances, so one that combined the two? Should’ve been a homerun. Unfortunately, while there was quite a bit of both that worked, the book overall didn’t hit well for me. Dante and Lucy grew up together in the little town of Mistletoe, Maine. They’d been childhood friends and then in a relationship, until he unexpectedly took off for California, throwing away all their careful plans for the future. In the almost nine years since, he’s […]

Fake relationship, second chance category romance

Just a Little Married by Reese Ryan

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This third and final book in the Moonlight Ridge trilogy is the whole reason I started reading it! I love Reese Ryan’s books, and I’m the sort of completionist who can’t just jump in with the third book, but I’ve definitely enjoyed discovering new authors. And this is the perfect finale for me with a mix of the second chance and fake relationship tropes! “Unlike his lovestruck brothers, Travis would happily stick to his “bachelor life,” get Moonlight Ridge’s kitchen and catering services in shape, […]

A grumpy architect and a sunshine wedding planner try to save a resort

Best Laid Wedding Plans by Karen Booth

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I enjoyed the first book in the Moonlight Ridge trilogy so I was very much looking forward to this one, especially since it seemed to feature that sunshine/grumpy dynamic I like so much. While this is the second in the series, there’s enough backstory that it could be read as a standalone. Autumn’s bringing in the press for Moonlight Ridge, but not due to the amazing weddings she plans there. Her estranged father is a Hollywood hotshot who’s been accused of multiple cases of sexual […]

“Friendship can be as deep as the ocean. It’s all a kind of love, and love isn’t any one kind of thing.”

Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts by Kate Racculia

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This book is rightly subtitled: An Adventure. I approve of that. It is an adventure! Reading this book is like bringing childhood and games back into adulthood (though one of the characters is a teenager). And it also has really good character work on top of that. Another way to describe this book is imagine if Ready Player One was set in the real world, and it was full of three-dimensional ladies and also ghosts: Boston multimillionaire dies, leaves game for the public, rewards the winners with […]



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