Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Big responsibility on little shoulders

The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman by Gennifer Choldenko

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Hank Hooperman’s mother has been missing for a full week. It’s not the first time she’s been away from home, but it’s certainly the longest. Hank has done the best he can to take care of his three year old sister Boo, but they’re running out of food and money. When the property manager threatens eviction, Hank makes a desperate move and brings Boo to the emergency contact listed on a field trip permission slip, a mysterious woman named Lou Ann. Lou Ann turns out […]

“You never have to do that with me. Show me the messy parts, okay? God knows, I’ve shown you mine.”

Next of Kin by Hannah Bonam-Young

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I had been flirting with reading a different Hannah Bonam-Young book and just couldn’t seem to commit to requesting it from my library. But then as I was scrolling Goodreads two weeks ago, I saw a review of Next of Kin and found myself immediately heading over to my library website and putting in a request which arrived within a couple days. Then I proceeded to read it in one long sitting on a Saturday. When I finished, I knew I was rating it 3.5 […]

This one’s for the bisexuals.

With Love, From Cold World by Alicia Thompson

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30 Books in 30 Days, Vol. 4 Book 18/30 Alicia Thompson is reliably smart and funny in all her romance books, and her characters have such heart. The setting in this one is also really fun: a tourist attraction in or near Orlando called Cold World, where it is winter all year long. Both of our main characters work there—Asa for over ten years (he’s been there since his family kicked him out for being bisexual), and Lauren for just over two (she is the […]

“We’ve got story enough here to eff up more than one young life, but it is a project.”

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

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CBR Bingo – In the Wild When I heard that Barbara Kingsolver had written a Pulitzer Prize winner I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. I was a huge fan of her 1999 Pulitzer finalist “The Poisonwood Bible” and have enjoyed a number of her other books so I knew I was going to like this book and I was right. This book is in my top five for the year. Kingsolver is a brilliant writer, creating characters that are both common and […]

“How does a government steal a child and then imprison him? How does it keep it a secret? This is how.”

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A very good and heartbreaking book to start the year with. Lemn Sissay’s powerful memoir My Name Is Why details his time in British foster care and shows the casual cruelty of the authoritarian system he was placed in. He had to fight the government for thirty years to get access to his records and he uses the paper trail of comments by his social worker, reports on his progress, and other pieces of the puzzle to show the gaps in the record and how […]

Hop in, we’re going for a read

Far from the Tree by Robin Benway

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After finishing Far from the Tree, I told myself, “Well, that was a ride.” But was it a good or bad one? Yes. There were things I loved, and things I hated. Sometimes I thought the characters were amazing, sometimes horrible (really horrible, and not necessarily where you might think that yourself). They were real and they were stereotypes. They are good and they are bad. In other words, human. Robin Benway created a story of three biologically siblings (boy, girl, girl). And there are […]



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