Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Now and then the images from those years come into alignment, and I see something…”

Darkroom: A Memoir in Black and White by Lila Quintero Weaver

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I tend to think I have a pretty good handle on the state of the graphic novel/comic scene, which is why when I stumble across a great book like this that I missed, it thrills me and makes me think about what else is out there that I haven’t found yet. This was a random find at a used bookstore, which is often my favorite way to find a book. It’s like a little gift that suddenly pops into your life! I wonder if part […]

This Family Tree is a Wreath!

Katie Mulholland by Catherine Cookson

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Katie Mulholland, the young scullery maid at a grand house, finds her life thrown into a tailspin when she is assaulted by her employer on the night of his engagement ball. I have an inexplicable love of old mass market paperbacks – especially pulpy books that originally sold for about a dollar that I never heard of before. So when my friend informed me that my local bookstore had an entire subterranean secondhand section, I obviously set off in search of most obscure, yellowing books […]

Get thee to a nunnery!

The Reluctant Countess by Eloisa James

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Yasmin’s reputation is tainted by her mother’s association with the Emperor Napoleon, and Giles certainly doesn’t need more scandal in his family. If only he could stay away from her… In a paradoxical way, though the author gave me more of the drama I’d complained was missing in How to Be a Wallflower, I disliked this book more. Indeed it made me grind my teeth I was so irritated with it sometimes. It is well-written, yes, which is true of pretty much all of James’s […]

… In for a Pound

In for a Penny by Rose Lerner

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When Nev’s father dies unexpectedly, he leaves the family mired in debt, so he decides to make a convenient marriage to Penny, the fabulously wealthy but low-born daughter of a brewer. This is the second book I’ve read by Lerner (the first being the fabulous A Lily Among Thorns), but it has many of the same hallmarks – an unconventional, rather unsentimental romance, a strong grounding in history, and plenty of intrigue and action. I enjoyed the plot about the tenant rebellion, even if I […]

The 1813 Wallflower Club

How to Woo a Wallflower by Virginia Heath

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Finally making her debut after a long recovery from a horse-riding accident, Hattie is relegated to the wallflower chairs – but at least her brother’s rakish best friend, Jasper, is there to keep her company. This might have been the oldest remnant on my NetGalley shelf that I’ve yet swept off – while I like this genre and this author, I never seemed to get into the mood for it. I had the idea that this would be a straightforward Regency romance, and the book […]

Crashing Off the Rails

The Orphan's Letters by Glynis Peters

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Kitty, an orphaned young woman, works to gain her Red Cross qualification as she continues to work as a nurse during World War Two. I picked up this ARC on NetGalley a while ago, and came to realize sometime after that that WW2 historical fiction is generally not for me. I enjoy learning about the time period and the experiences of ordinary people, but I find that the plots zigzag between melodramatic and dull too much for my liking. But my NetGalley shelf needs to […]



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