Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Don’t you think it’s possible that this could be good? That maybe this won’t lead to disaster after all? What if we find out that we fit together, like your grandparents and their hands?” (Bingo #8)

Blackout by Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk, Nicola Yoon

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Blackout is a novel comprised of several short stories covering five hours in the course of one night in New York as it experiences a blackout. Tiffany D. Jackson writes The Long Walk which is broken up into five acts, Nic Stone contributes Mask Off (perhaps my favorite of the bunch), Ashley Woodfolk’s Made to Fit, Dhonielle Clayton provides All the Great Love Stories… and Dust, as well as being the person who sparked the project into existence, Angie Thomas’s No Sleep Till Brooklyn, and […]

Not a great collection of stories, in my opinion.

A Universe of Wishes by ed. Dhonielle Clayton

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This was a pretty disappointing collection. I only enjoyed a handful of stories. I think the thing that frustrates me the most about YA fantasy and sf recently is that these are the genres of the imagination, and yet so many authors keep telling the same old stories, even, as it turns out, when those stories are populated by a diverse cast of characters, featuring characters of many races, genders, and sexualities. Some of these stories were dull and uninspired, some I thought were just […]

“We can’t expect one person – or even two – to take on the entire burden of resisting on their shoulders. We all have to stand up and say NO.”

The Everlasting Rose by Dhonielle Clayton

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CBR 13 Bingo: Flora The Everlasting Rose is the sequel to Dhonielle Clayton’s  The Belles.  To quote myself regarding The Belles, “This was fantasy the likes of which I haven’t read before, full of decadence and frippery, a magic system based on beauty, and I was entranced.”  The Everlasting Rose is a different beast of a book compared to its predecessor as it is a fugitive and resistance story. The soon to be new Queen of Orleans, Sophia, is setting the pieces in place for a […]

Two books I had not intended on reviewing together

The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton

Poisoned by Jennifer Donnelly

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The Belles By Dhonielle Clayton   In this world, most people are born unattractive – they have grey skin, red eyes, and straw-like hair. There are a few who are not so, and who look like what we think of as regular people.  These people are called Belles, and they have the power, somehow, of making other people “beautiful.”  They can change someone’s skin color, eye color, hair color and texture and length, and even change bone structure and muscle.  But these changes are like […]

What if you could have your entire appearance altered by magic, over and over again? – UnCannon

The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton

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UnCannon: Dhonielle Clayton is a young (37 is younger than me so it counts!) black woman so she is pretty polar opposite of an old white man.  I had my eye on The Belles for a while now and when the Black Publishing Power Initiative came up, it seemed the perfect time to buy the book. Clayton created a world where beauty is the ultimate, ever changing goal, and access to beauty is controlled.  Cursed by the God of the Sky the people of Orleans are […]

Sophomore Slump?

The Everlasting Rose by Dhonielle Clayton

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Honestly I am always worried when a debut author puts their second book out. I always worry that I am comparing it too much to the first. However, since the first book by Clayton was the first book in this series, I can’t help but compare it. And I have to say that the second book didn’t work for me at all. I was bored and just kept waiting for something (anything to happen). This book didn’t expand the world the reader had found out […]



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