Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I still don’t get what a nome is…

The End of Oz (Dorothy Must Die book #4) by Danielle Paige

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This is the fourth and final installment of the Dorothy Must Die series. The first three books are dark in their own right, but this book feels a little more so. In book 4, we travel to Ev, land of the Nome King. I’m not familiar with the original Oz books, but if you are familiar with the difference between The Wizard of Oz movie and the sequel Return to Oz, that is the change of pace to which I’m referring. Remember the wheelers? Yeah, […]

Monkeys and unicorns, and monsters, oh my!

The Wicked Will Rise (Dorothy Must Die book #2) by Danielle Paige

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This is an example of where the second installment is better than the first. If you aren’t familiar with the Dorothy Must Die series of books, you can read my review of book 1 here. Basically, this is the second book in the Dorothy Must Die series, which tells the story of Amy Gumm, a teenager from Flat Hills Kansas, who finds herself whisked away to Oz. Amy discovers Dorothy is real, and has transformed Oz into a magical wasteland and ruled with an iron fist. […]

This will be one of my year-end favorites

Bea Wolf by Zach Weinersmith, Boulet

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Bea Wolf is a graphic novel that re-imagines the classic epic poem Beowulf. I’ve reviewed Seamus Heaney’s award-winning translation of Beowulf as well as  Maria Dahvana Headley’s Beowulf-inspired novel The Mere Wife (an excellent read) but this Beowulf is a little different. And it is also outstanding! Bea Wolf is Beowulf for kids. It is clever and hilarious with incredibly good black and white drawings by Boulet. Much like a Bugs Bunny cartoon, kids could read this and get a good laugh out of it, […]

A bit of a mixed bag (and a complete Passport!)

The Lost Apothecary: A Novel by Sarah Penner

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CBR15passport book you own (passport complete) I bought this book a while back as part of a sale. It’s historical fiction, which I almost always enjoy, and it moves back and forth between the late 18th century and present day London. Overall, it’s a decent read, the kind of book that you could finish on a long flight or over a weekend. Its focus is on female characters struggling to deal with dishonest and unfaithful men, and women finding fulfillment in their own work and […]

This ain’t Green Acres

In the Beginning Was the Sea by Tomas Gonzalez

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Cbr15passport books from different countries (Colombia) I learned about this short novel from a NYT “By the Book” interview with Patricia Engel. When asked about a great book that no one seems to know about, she mentioned Tomas Gonzalez’s In the Beginning Was the Sea (published in 1983, English translation in 2014 by Frank Wynne) for its shocking twists and turns. I must admit, it did not disappoint. The set up of the novel had the potential for it to be a comedy, but this […]

“How terrible – to be an ordinary orphan.”

When We Were Sisters: A Novel by Fatimah Asghar

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CBR15passport new to you authors Fatimah Asghar (they/them) is a writer and co-producer of the Ms. Marvel series on Disney+ as well as creator of the Emmy-nominated web series Brown Girls. They have published poetry and a previous novel, If They Come For Us. Asghar’s parents experienced the chaos and violence of the partition of India and Pakistan and emigrated to the US, where Asghar was born.  Asghar’s parents died when Asghar was a child. While similar events occur in When We Were Sisters, this […]



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