Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I Might Prefer the Movie Because of the Perfect Casting Decisions

Everything Everything by Nicola Yoon

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Madeline Whittier is a teenage girl, but unlike other teenage girls, she doesn’t leave her house.  The only humans she interacts with face to face are her mother and her nurse/care taker and the very rare in person visit from her tutor.  Most of her communication is over the computer and the internet. Maddy has an incredibly rare disease that has left her with an immune system that is basically non-existent.  She can’t step outside without risk of becoming sick and dying, and everyone that […]

I’d rather spend one minute holding you than the rest of my life knowing that I never could

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I was wary of reading another YA romance-du-jour, as I find that some of them are just too cliché, though this could be a side-effect of not being in the target age demographic.  But I read so many absolutely glowing reviews for the movie adaptation of Everything, Everything that I had to check out the book first. And dude. DUUUUUUDE. This book is incredible.     The book starts by throwing you right into the daily existence of Madeline F. Whittier, as she describes her […]

The girl in the bubble and the boy in black

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3.5 stars Madeleine has never left her house or been outside. She’s got a rare auto-immune disorder and lives in a house hermetically sealed, with special filters making sure nothing gets in that could hurt her. The only people she sees regularly are her mother, whose a doctor, and her nurse, Carla. On very special occasions, when he’s been decontaminated thoroughly, she’s allowed to meet one of her favourite tutors, but Madeline’s life is lived mostly vicariously through books and the internet, dreaming of the […]

One Sees Clearly Only with the Heart

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Right after finishing and loving The Sun is Also a Star, I ran out to the library and got Nicola Yoon’s first novel, Everything, Everything.  Though I didn’t love it quite as much as her second book, I thought it was engaging, moving, and well-constructed.  I also can see Yoon starting to think through some minor themes that become major themes in The Sun is Also a Star. This novel is a love story, but it’s not your typical teen romance. Madeline Whittier, who is […]

Maddy was a bubble girl, yet there was no mention of the Moops.

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Madeline is 18 years old and lives in a bubble. Literally. She has an auto-immune disease and has spent her entire life in a germ-free environment. Her house has an air lock and a decontamination chamber. She takes classes via Skype and her only companions are her mother and her nurse, Carla. Olly moves in next door and immediately becomes an obsession for Maddy. He’s handsome and full of energy. He’s funny and wants to know more about her, and soon they find themselves chatting […]

“Life is a gift. Don’t forget to live it.”

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“Sometimes I reread my favorite books from back to front. I start with the last chapter and read backward until I get to the beginning. When you read this way, characters go from hope to despair, from self-knowledge to doubt. In love stories, couples start out as lovers and end as strangers. Coming-of-age books become stories of losing your way. Your favorite characters come back to life.” Madeline Whittier has grown up in a bubble; she just turned eighteen and has spent the last seventeen […]



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