Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Sunshine and grumpy: Christmas edition

Magically Generated by Jackie Lau

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CBR17 Bingo: Arts (Everett makes detailed sketches before making his amazing snow sculptures) This was an ARC from the author. My opinions are my own. Nora Blackburn no longer believes in love and is super wary of anything that might be a fraud or scam. Her previous relationship was with a man who scammed her out of thousands of dollars, and she’s determined not to be fooled again. Her state of constant hyperawareness and scepticism of everyone and everything also means she isolates herself, and she […]

“She wanted to read stories that had been written with care, by a writer who’d wrestled with words, who might have sworn at the computer and procrastinated by cleaning the entire apartment and furiously dictated notes in the middle of the night”

Magically Generated by Jackie Lau

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Invariably, something that is bothering an author is going to make its way into the book they’re writing. That something for Jackie Lau in Magically Generated is GenAI. While I am largely on the side that Lau takes via her main character’s rants, I thought the note was hit too often and it wasn’t necessary because Lau already had enough character depth with Nora to have the reader empathize with her “done with the nonsense and not trusting anyone new or anything on the internet” vibe she is giving off strongly as this Christmas novella gets started (and throughout, really).    I love […]

Probably best to skip the mystery dumplings at the night market

Time Loops & Meet Cutes by Jackie Lau

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4.5 stars Thank you to Netgalley, Jackie Lau and Atria Books for this ARC. My opinions are my own. Noelle Tom feels like she’s in a rut. She’s underappreciated at work, she doesn’t have much of a social life to speak of, and she’s pretty much given up on love and dating. Having worked late yet another Friday evening, Noelle goes to the night market and buys some dumplings from a mysterious old woman who claims they will “give her what she needed most”. Unfortunately, […]

Magical Realism Dumplings

Time Loops & Meet Cutes by Jackie Lau

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Time loop stories are not my favorite genre so when Jackie Lau announced last year that Time Loops & Meet Cutes would be the title of her next book published by Atria Books, I took note but hadn’t planned on prioritizing it in my reading. Then I was sent an ARC and my curiosity and trust in Lau pushed me to accept it and get reading.   When we meet Noelle Tom, she is an overworked, underpaid, chronically in her own head person who doesn’t have […]

Groundhog Day with a food scene

Time Loops and Meet Cutes by Jackie Lau

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This is only my second Jackie Lau novel (I think, if Goodreads is accurate). I actually quite liked the other novel I read by her and yet … I don’t know, sometimes, you just have those authors that you check out, you enjoy but they just also don’t quite pull you in enough to make you want to go read everything else they have written, for whatever the reason. I generally like a good time loop story, though (hello Palm Springs, Groundhog Day and that […]

But how do I get from learning his name to getting a kiss so I can possibly break this time-loop curse?

Time Loops and Meet Cutes by Jackie Lau

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I started reading Jackie Lau in 2019. While that may not seem like much, but it’s been a long 6 years, and Lau’s books consistently bring me joy. Time Loops and Meet Cutes might be the best book Jackie Lau has written yet. It has classic Jackie Lau elements: an FMC who is all in her head and trying to figure out this curveball life has thrown, complicated family, the glorious food of Toronto, and Lau’s own unique author voice. This is the first book […]



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