Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Made me want to re-read Six of Crows instead

To Steal from Thieves by M.K. Lobb

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Thank you to Netgalley and Little, Brown Books for this ARC. My opinions are my own. In an alternate version of Victorian London, magic exists and can be used to improve technology. It’s known as alchemology, and requires the magic-user to sacrifice some blood and life force to create the magical element known as primateria. It means that alchemologists tend to have shorter lifespans, which was certainly the case with Zaria Mendoza’s father. Now she’s an orphan struggling to complete her father’s outstanding commissions to […]

“These are the times in her life that Louise has felt most acutely the animal nature of her humanity, and therefore they have been the most comforting. To be a human is complex, and often painful; to be an animal is comfortingly simple and good.”

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

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It’s early, coming up on the end of March, but this book is in the running for my top book of the year. Everyone I know who has read this book has told me it is amazing. Everyone I know was telling me the truth, and now I keep recommending it to everyone else. One important caveat first, I do NOT think this book really works as an audiobook. Each chapter you are jumping characters and timelines and I could not follow it for the […]

The forest and the trees

North Woods by Daniel Mason

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I don’t know how to summarize this book – a potpourri of genres (although mostly historical fiction, if you had to pinpoint it), a truly eclectic cast of characters, and incredible prose. The kind of book where you think about the characters after the book is closed, and you puzzle over the last chapter even though he totally stuck the landing (endings are so hard!) Mason somehow describes both the forest and the trees in a very readable and really kinda weird novel. He sharply […]

L’état C’est Lost

The Black Tower by Louis Bayard

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I greatly enjoyed Louis Bayard’s The Pale Blue Eye and was excited to pick this one up as well given how effectively he wrote his other historical mystery. And though I liked it a hair less, it did not disappoint. There has always been a curiosity amongst conspiracy theorists wondering what if some historical figures survived death. Hitler in the bunker. The princes in the Tower. And Louis-Charles, the dauphin of France and rightful heir to the throne of his father, Louis XVI. Sadly for him, he […]

I should read more Susanna Kearsley

The King's Messenger by Susanna Kearsley

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StoryGraph Easy Reading Challenge 2025: All Alone – Read a stand-alone book Thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for this ARC. My opinions are my own. It is 1613 and Prince Henry, James I’s eldest son and heir has tragically died. Rumours whisper that it might not have been by natural causes. Queen Anna is distraught, and King James is determined to punish the guilty. Andrew Logan is one of the king’s messengers and he’s tasked with going to Scotland to apprehend Sir David Moray, […]

Wives Die Young in Faraday House

The Third Wife of Faraday House by B.R. Myers

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In 1816, Halifax, Nova Scotia (shout out to my hometown!) Emeline Fitzpatrick is a young woman in a pickle.  A scandalous pickle.  She’s fallen in love with a lieutenant in the British Navy, but he hasn’t proposed, and her guardians have set their sights higher for her marriage prospects.  Instead of living her dream of sailing away to Bermuda with her beau, Emeline instead gets caught alone with them, and this results in her getting sent down the South Shore of Nova Scotia to be […]



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