Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Spoooky Gothic Romance

The Cruel Dark by Bea Northwick

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You’re promising me some traumatic amnesia, a giant scary estate, and possible ghosts and/or fairy shenanigans? Yes please thank you Bea Northwick! A perfect read for the week before Halloween. Millicent Foxboro is alone in the world. Having overcome a difficult childhood and amnesia that mysteriously erased four years of her life, she now craves stability. When an unexpected job offer arrives with a ridiculously large salary Millicent feels she must take it. She arrives at the once grand but now overgrown estate with its […]

The Hellmouth May/May Not Be Located in Kentucky Thanks to Miner Barons

Starling House by Alix E. Harrow

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Let’s get it out of the way for the CBR Bingo this is row 2, column 1: Dwelling. My rating on Storygraph is 3.5 and we don’t have have decimals and fraction ratings here, but this isn’t something I’d rate a 4. In that case, I’m CBR rating it a 3. I tagged Starling House #StrangerThings and I also tagged it #GothicRomance and #MiningCountry and, in sum, that’s how I’d describe the genre and even plot of this book. This is one I wasn’t sure I’d stick […]

Heroine as Victim

Tregaron's Daughter by Madeleine Brent

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When I started reading this, I was surprised how similar the plot was to Madeleine Brent’s (Modesty Blaise writer Peter O’Donnell in reality) first novel, Merlin’s Keep. We have a spunky young lass, a dying father, a benevolent and rich foster father who takes her into his family, and a handsome young man with a checkered past who seems to dislike her but secretly pines for her. Cadi Tregaron from Cornwall is the spunky heroine. She takes care of her father in a small fishing […]

A Gothic romance that could have been better

The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling

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[Read as an audiobook from the public library] Sigh. Okay. Y’all, I really, really like Crimson Peak. It’s a weird, sexy, stylish, haunted spun sugar mess of a thing that I will watch any time it’s on. And clearly the author of The Death of Jane Lawrence also likes it. And I do not fault her taste for that. But I feel like she might have some views on the Law of Attraction that we might argue about. Jane Shoringfield is a sensible woman. She […]

A Few Drops of Water to Keep the Peace

The Wife in the Attic by Rose Lerner

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I’m going to be clear up front that I am not a fan of the Brontes and I really dislike Mr. Rochester. When he gets held up as a romantic hero my jaw clenches. When Rose Lerner announced she was writing an f/f retelling of Jane Eyre I was delighted.  I was delighted Mr. Rochester wouldn’t end up with the love of a good woman, and more importantly, Rose Lerner is an amazing author and I’d read her retelling of my grocery list. The Wife […]

The Original YA Novel: Classic for a Reason

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

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Everyone has a classic book that they’ve successfully managed to avoid. Jane Eyre is mine. After abusive Wuthering Heights left me fuming—f***ing emo Heathcliff—I binned all the Brontë sisters. I know now that I did wrong. Strong and sensitive Jane Eyre is the progenitoress of Anne of Green Gables, Meg Murray, Lyra Belacqua, and Katniss Everdeen. Unlike any English novel prior to 1847, the story happens *inside* a young woman’s mind, giving the reader direct access to her thoughts, emotions, and observations. (The book couldn’t […]



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