Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Limits of a Good Metaphor

King of Immortal Tithe by Ben Alderson

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Listen: it’s fundamentally really tricky to pull off a romance when the premise for their connection is that this is the ONLY person who can physically touch you and not die. Our basics here are fairly simple: our ingenue protagonist is abducted in a kind of marriage trade to a fae prince whose touch drains people’s life force, causing instant death. Except it doesn’t work on our hero. Possibly because he’s already dying. And that creates an instant connection. But that premise only goes so far, right? […]

How to Bang Your Dragon (Without Necessarily Knowing Her Personally!)

Treasured by Poppy Woods

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Listen: if you want to bang the dragon that sorta kinda grave-robbed your mother, go for it. Have fun! Dragons are sexy! But if you want to decide that the dragon that sorta kinda grave-robbed your mother is now the LOVE of your LIFE, you probably need to have a little more going for your relationship than that she’s: 1) hot And 2) here. Don’t get me wrong: the sex is good. Aside from a somewhat creepy start to the first sex scene, the sex […]

Here’s an interesting moment in any friendship. That time when one person has revealed something essential about themselves and the other must decide if they can accept it.

Lone Women by Victor Lavalle

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CBR15PASSPORT: (Stamp #10: Different Genres, Horror) CBR15BINGO: (Strange Worlds square: Lavalle specializes in infusing strange worlds into the real world.) I read Lavalle’s The Changeling a handful of years ago when it first came out. Like that novel, Lone Women is a story about something very essential wrapped up in a mixed genre blanket of fairy/folktale, horror, and in this case, western. While The Changeling was about postpartum depression and what it means to be a parent, Lone Women is, as the title implies, about […]

They had no idea what lay ahead, and maybe it was a good thing.

Where Coyotes Howl by Sandra Dallas

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CBR15PASSPORT (Stamp #9: New to me author) CBR15BINGO (North America square: about homesteading in Wyoming) When I saw a “highly recommend” quote on this book cover from Paulette Jiles that was all I needed to pull it from the library shelf. Note to self: I need to be a bit more wary of author endorsement quotes on book covers. It has taken me too long to learn that lesson the hard way. Looking for excitement and a challenge, a young woman moves from Iowa to the […]

A bee without a hive will die.

The Last Beekeeper by Julie Carrick Dalton

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CBR15 PASSPORT (Stamp #8: New to me author) CBR15 BINGO (Dwelling square: main character’s childhood home is an additional “character” in the novel) I gravitate toward interesting book covers and environmental fiction. This ticked both of those boxes. I’m a gardener and spending time poking around in my yard over some 20-odd years makes me hyper-aware of climate change. Annuals becoming perennials. Spring ephemerals showing up earlier and earlier. Late-season bloomers popping up in July instead of September. It’s hard to miss the changes. I’m in […]

We’re not separated from the world by our own edges.

Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano

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CBR15 PASSPORT (Stamp #7: New to me author) CBR15 BINGO (Adulthood square: four sisters figuring out their shit) This book has been touted as a re-telling of Little Women. If you squint a little, I guess it works. It is a book about complicated relationships between four sisters with a domineering mother and a mostly absent father (although not physically absent). Napolitano does even reference Little Women as the sisters try to figure out which Alcott sister they represent. Unlike the classic sisters though, Napolitano’s characters […]



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