Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

You Deserve a Strawberry Garnish

A Big Surprise for Valentine's Day by Jackie Lau

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It is no secret that I have become a fan of Jackie Lau in the past year. I reviewed 8 of her books last year and am looking forward to reading and reviewing more in the future. I received A Big Surprise for Valentine’s Day as an arc from the author in exchange for an honest review. I’ve enjoyed the entire Holidays with the Wong series. Lau set out to write a series that ticked a lot of boxes – small town romance, holiday romance, racially […]

One Night Stand Fail

A Match Made for Thanksgiving by Jackie Lau

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I saw faintingviolet’s review for the third novella in this series, and she mentioned that in the first novella, the parents had ambushed all four of their adult children with Thanksgiving set ups which were based on romance novellas tropes – the set ups were a disaster but I was curious to see what tropes their parents had tried to force, and picked the Thanksgiving novella as a result. Nick is the middle brother in his family, and lives in Toronto.  He loves the city […]

Lau writes characters you care about – and that’s a really good thing.

A Fake Girlfriend for Chinese New Year (Holidays with the Wongs #3) by Jackie Lau

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I continue to love the conceit of these novellas; there are four Wong children, all unattached, and their parents and grandparents hatch a plan to set them up with potential partners at Canadian Thanksgiving based on the tropes in the romance novels that their mother and grandmother read. The initial matches go terribly, but as the holidays progress each Wong sibling finds love in different romantic tropey ways. For A Fake Girlfriend for Chinese New Year Lau combined the friends to lovers and fake relationship […]

Short reads to finish off my reading year (and help me to finally complete my double Cannonball)

Night of the Scoundrel by Kelly Bowen

The Monsters We Deserve by Marcus Sedgwick

A Match Made for Thanksgiving by Jackie Lau

A Second-Chance Road Trip for Christmas by Jackie Lau

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Night of the Scoundrel by Kelly Bowen Rating: 4 stars In this novella which concludes Kelly Bowen’s The Devils of Dover series, we finally find out more about the mysterious King, who has been popping up in Bowen’s books for a long time. A shadowy London crime lord with connections to smuggling, art forgery, theft and all sorts of other untoward business, he is not a man to cross. He discovers that a man he believed to be dead, a man who ruined his childhood and set him […]

Continually Thankful My Own Mother Doesn’t Use Her Knowledge of Romance Novel Tropes Against Her Children

A Match Made for Thanksgiving by Jackie Lau

A Second Chance Road Trip for Christmas by Jackie Lau

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We’ve reached the time of year where I usually plow through a couple holiday romance novellas while traveling and wind up my Cannonball year. I’ve read two such novellas (and have emmalita to thank for getting them on my radar) and I couldn’t be happier about it. It has also added a new to me author to my buy list so thank goodness I just got a gift card for books in my work Secret Santa! A Match Made for Thanksgiving and A Second Chance […]

Two Great Tropes in One

A Fake Girlfriend for Chinese New Year by Jackie Lau

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Jackie Lau’s A Fake Girlfriend for Chinese New Year is the third in her quartet of small town holiday romances, Holidays with the Wongs. Lau is one of the authors I discovered this year via Twitter and she has become one of my comfort reads. I have yet to dislike one of her books, and I found this one charming, and yes, comfortable. After being traumatized with a surprise blind date in A Match Made for Thanksgiving, Zach Wong is worried his mother and grandmother will try […]



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