Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“And he had at least eight rules for lying. More, if you counted the negative ones.”

The Marquis Who Musn't by Courtney Milan

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Milan is a queen among mere mortals. It is no surprise that this is another excellent addition to her catalogue. Plot: Kai is a fraudster, just like his dad, but he’s added a few rules about how to best defraud people to the ones he was taught. And he’s about to engage in the most ambitious fraud of his life. Unfortunately, it requires going back to the village he grew up in, where every single person has been hurt by his father’s cons. Fortunately, one […]

“One ought to be able to grasp like a hag when bread is involved.”

Once Upon a Marquess by Courtney Milan

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I strayed too far out of Romancelandia and lost all my will to read, but where there is a Milan book, there is salvation. Plot: Lady Judith was on the cusp of joining the marriage mart when her father and brother were accused, by her intended, of treason against the Crown. Both were found guilty, with her father dying in jail while her brother was transported and lost at sea. So it should have probably come as no surprise that she was not interested in […]

Two five stars in a row from me for this series. I love it so much!

The Marquis Who Mustn't (Wedgeford Trials, #2) by Courtney Milan

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As often happens with books that I five-star love and gobble up in a mindless pleasure fest of reading indulgently, I am finding it hard to have anything to say beyond BOOK GOOD READ NOW. But let’s try anyway. This is the second book in Courtney Milan’s Wedgeford Trials series, about a small town in Victorian England that is full of mostly Chinese emigrants (as always, the author’s notes are a must-read for historical context) but other members of the Asian diaspora as well. The […]

If the standards don’t include my fiancée being happy, what good are the standards?

The Marquis Who Mustn’t by Courtney Milan

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As I read The Marquis Who Mustn’t, I found myself reading scenes aloud to a friend while we were running errands together (nothing like an audience trapped with you in a car). I actually called her later in the day and read more choice bits. She didn’t hang up on me. She even chuckled. So, yes, I loved this. The Marquis Who Mustn’t is delightful and also heavy on the angst. It dives into some issues I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. If you […]

A lovely return to Wedgeford

The Marquis Who Mustn't by Courtney Milan

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This is an ARC I received from the author. My opinions are not influenced by my free copy. I have also already pre-ordered the book. Official book description: Miss Naomi Kwan has long wanted to take ambulance classes so that she can save lives. But when she tries to register, she’s told she needs permission from the man in charge of her. It would be incredibly wrong to claim that the tall, taciturn Chinese nobleman she just met is her fiancé, but Naomi is desperate, […]

I’m dying. I’m dead. Murdered by the puppy cannon!

The Suffragette Scandal by Courtney Milan

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CBR15passport recommended ‘You can address me by my preferred title: you idiot.’ I’ve seen references to “the puppy cannon” amongst romance novel fans here on CBR over the years. I never really investigated what it meant and in my head, for some reason, it was “the puppy canon,” like some kind of reference to a specific sub-genre of romance novel. It is not. It is truly the puppy cannon, and if there were to be some kind of puppy cannon canon, I would be all […]



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