Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

How the legend might have started with books before lattes

Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree

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What’s cozy in the same way as a latte? Second-hand books. That’s what we get with Bookshops & Bonedust, and I’m down with that. This is a pretty good prequel, but it can be done as a stand-alone, and it also does a nice job of maybe setting up volume 3. The whole story starts with young and eager Viv getting ahead of herself and getting injured in a fight. The rest of her team leaves her behind to recover in middle of nowhere Murk, […]

Part 2 problems but not really that bad

Apprentice to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

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Cozy streak incoming. First up: Apprentice to the Villain. This is definitely a part two, in that it’s still a good continuation of the story, but it focuses on developing the big problems to be resolved later. That means there is less character development, and a lot more emphasis on mutual pining, which really gets irritating. The general lack of clear communication causing misunderstandings and problems in romance is a main reason I don’t read a lot of that, because it’s so very avoidable. Do […]

So glad I made it past the late 90s, I would’ve been an embarrassing ghost then.

Grave Expectations by Alice Bell

The Crime Brulee Bake Off by Rebecca Connolly

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You ever just start scrolling down your library’s “available now” page, even though you have eleventy-seventy thousand books in your TBR mountain? Yeah, me too. And that’s how I wandered into two pretty good, but out of my usual genre, cozy-ish mysteries that I came here to recommend. They’re both debut novels, and I read them on audio – They have the same narrator, Sophie Roberts, who did such a great job w/The Crime Brulee Bake Off, and that I clicked her name to see […]

A mediocre cozy fantasy, might still be worth your time if you really love animals.

The Phoenix Keeper by S.A. MacLean

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A socially anxious zookeeper working in phoenix conservation gets the chance of a lifetime to breed phoenixes and falls in love with her rival/frenemy from the griffin show in the process. Sounds nice, right? Books like this one almost frustrate me more than the real stinkers that deserve one or two stars. It’s ALMOST there for me. The premise=great. The themes=great. A convergence of genres that I love, plus magical animals and nerds=great. But none of it came together the way I wanted it to, […]

The Game Might Be Changing but not the Characters

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! v.9 by Satoru Yamaguchi, Nami Hidaka

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I have been a little desperate for the cozy; not only is the world (you know, gestures at the state of things), but there’s been some other unfortunately timed drama beyond my control in my life as well. Cozy mindless manga to the rescue! My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! Is definitely cozy. The friendship angle always wins, and nothing bad lasts for more than a few pages. In volume 9 of the manga, Katarina is happily awaiting the end […]

A fun read, but possibly too light-hearted

Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree

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3.5 stars Twenty years before the events in Legends & Lattes, Viv is a young and relatively inexperienced mercenary, who gets badly injured fighting undead monsters while hunting for a powerful necromancer. Her mercenary band leave her in the quiet and mostly empty seaside town of Murk to heal up and recuperate. She worries that the group are going to leave her there, but thankfully, to take her mind off her fears, she encounters the local bookshop owner, who manages to persuade her (Viv has […]



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