Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

When Langston Found Langston

Finding Langston by Lesa Cline-Ransome

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Finding Langston by Lesa Cline-Ransome is an interesting look at the late 1940s, Chicago, growing up and literature that was way too short. I would have enjoyed more of the history of the time and seen a bigger connection to the two people called Langston. Still, I enjoyed what I read but, like I said, there needed to be more: more of the history of the times (Why were the black families moving north? Why were the soldiers were coming back? Even the fact that […]

The found family narrative works better than the romance

Love at First by Kate Clayborn

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3.5 stars Disclaimer! I got this book as an ARC from NetGalley. That has in no way influenced my review. Sixteen years ago, Will Stirling first cast eyes on Nora Clarke and was instantly smitten. He was standing under a shaded tree, listening with a sinking heart to his mother pleading with the uncle he hadn’t even realised existed, while she was up high on a balcony, throwing little tomatoes at thieving squirrels. Cut to the present day, when Will is an overworked doctor and has […]

If you found a long-lost hidden diary, how long would it take you to devour the entire thing?

Arcadia Falls by Carol Goodman

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If you found a long-lost private diary written by a woman who died under mysterious circumstances, would you read it? What if that woman was one of the founders of the school where you are currently employed? What if you are living in that woman’s former home? What if you are writing your thesis on this woman and her work? What if, less than two pages into the diary- webs of secrets start to untangle? OF COURSE you would read it. Our narrator, Meg Rosenthal […]

Best read with tissues handy

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

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Everything I Never Told You isn’t the type of book I normally read, and nor was it what I expected at all – thinking I was getting some kind of murder mystery, what I got was a quietly devastating portrayal of a family hurting from all of its repressed hopes, dreams, desires and resentments. Lydia, the beloved eldest child of Marilyn and James Lee, is found dead in the lake near their home. Blond haired blue eyed Marilyn had always wanted to become a doctor, […]

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad…House

It Will Just Be Us by Jo Kaplan

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A knock at the door. A series of frantic knocks at the door. Yes, It Will Just Be Us  nearly starts with “it was a dark and stormy night”. Our narrator, Sam, is a down-and-out adjunct professor of archeology barely hanging onto her sanity. After a series of upsetting events, we find her moving back to her crumbling, ancestral mansion in on the edge of a foreboding Virginia swamp. The mansion is, for all intents and purposes, haunted. It’s haunted by the living specter of her […]

Allie’s not dead! She’s back and she gave us this wonderful book and she’s ok (sort of)

Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh

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Back in 2013, Allie Brosh published Hyperbole and a Half named after the blog she kept (and has finally updated with a new post!). I pre-ordered the last book and bought it as a Christmas present for pretty much every single person my husband and I knew that year (now our own copy seems to have mysteriously gone missing – which distresses me). Allie’s blog (we are clearly on first-name basis, and would be great friends if we ever met) and her book meant a lot to me, […]



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