Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“We can make our own world, Viola, with our own rules.”

A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall

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This is an emotionally lovely historical romance featuring a trans woman and her childhood best friend and so much pining! Two years after the war, things are not going well for either Viola or Gracewood. Viola used it as an opportunity to change her future, but while she’s happy as a lady’s companion to her sister-in-law Lady Marleigh, she’s still wary of moving about in greater society. Gracewood has taken the death of his best friend particularly hard, and once word reaches Lady Marleigh of […]

Faith and Deprivation on the Channel Islands

An Island At War by Deborah Carr

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Estelle has sent her younger sister Rosie away from their home just in time, for days later the Germans occupy the Channel Islands. Now both sisters must survive their respective environments as best as they can. I picked up this book despite the tiring similarity of many WW2 historicals because it had an unusual setting – the Channel Islands, which were occupied by Germans for much of the war. I had hoped that this unique experience would lend itself to a more memorable tale. Unfortunately, […]

The Spanish Dancer

Dare to Love by Jennifer Wilde

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Mary Ellen is a girl from Cornwall, deserted by her lover. Elena Lopez is a dancer, glamorous and wild, the mistress of musicians and kings. Dare to Love tells the story of her journey from one to the other. Jennifer Wilde is the pseudonym of T.E. Huff, who wrote under this name during the 1980s. Though I’ve some Wilde books on my TBR, this is the first I’ve read, and I think the one that was most ripped from history, for Elena is clearly based on Lola […]

“If she closed her eyes she might fix this in her memory always: the pulse in Kath’s throat; the warmth of her body; the scent of her skin.”

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

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In Last Night at the Telegraph Club Malinda Lo created National Book Award for Young People’s Literature winner which aims to challenge pervasive perceptions of the 1950s in the United States, including stereotypes about Chinese Americans, the invisibility of the lesbian and gay community, and the role of women in the space program, and the reach of Red Scare paranoia on people’s day to day lives. It is also the story of two young women falling in love during their senior year of high school […]

The Schoolhouse Blizzard

Maddy and the Monstrous Storm by Julie Gilbert

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Maddy  is new to the prairie, but when she and her classmates are trapped in their schoolhouse by a ferocious blizzard, she must lead them all to safety. I’d first heard of the Schoolhouse Blizzard a year or two ago, when I read Melanie Benjamin’s The Children’s Blizzard, which similarly followed a schoolteacher and a group of schoolchildren who were trapped by the snow and had to fight to survive. This book covers the same topic and themes, but in a way that is more accessible […]

A Bonkbuster Double Feature

Mistral's Daughter by Judith Krantz

Princess Daisy by Judith Krantz

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Every so often I go on a kick of reading those commercial romances about driven young women published in the 1980s that are sometimes called bonkbusters. You must admit they are rather addictive in their escapist nature and their pulpy plots. It annoys me when people dismiss them as ‘trashy,’ as though they have to make excuses for not reading Dickens or whoever all the time. There’s still good writing there- and I think that’s especially true when it comes to Judith Krantz. Mistral’s Daughter […]



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