Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

An Interesting Addition to Vampire Canon

This Ravenous Fate by Hayley Dennings

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This was a highly anticipated release between the premise and the setting, but after finishing it I’m sitting here unsure how I feel about it. Layla Quinn and Elise Saint were best friends until several years ago with Layla’s parents were killed and she was turned into a reaper. She especially blames the Saints and most especially Elise, because Elise betrayed her trust by telling her father, Tobias Saint, about Layla’s parents’ plan to help the reapers and meet with the Harlem clan. Because of […]

a manor on the edge of ruin, a mute little girl, a butler with a dangerous past, and a potentially magical drunken dandy…

The Maker of Swans by Paraic O'Donnell

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What looks like a recipe for potential nonsense is actually a truly surprising and unique thriller! Paraic O’Donnell follows up the Victorian spiritualism of The House on Vesper Sands with another historical mystery, but where I was expecting (and hoping for, honestly) a continuation of the former, The Maker of Swans jumps head-first into the 20th Century and dares the reader to catch up. A butler tries his damndest to keep his employer safe, sane, and sober- but the draws of the Jazz Age have the […]

Lost in (audiobook) translation

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel of the Jazz Age hit a milestone birthday- 95!- meaning that it fell into the public domain at the end of 2020. One of the podcasts I listen to, Planet Money, used that milestone as a reason to release a podcast episode that was an audiobook of the novel, as read by its hosts. Its been years since I last read The Great Gatsby, and in that interim I’ve read Ernest Hemingway’s non-fiction account of his time in Paris in […]

Gotta dance!

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I was immediately intrigued by Melina’s review of The Girls at the Kingfisher Club.  It looked like the kind of story that hit all my soft spots: Manhattan, fairy tales, Jazz Age, and, perhaps most importantly, ladies who shut down the dance floor.  I cannot help myself with the dance stories.  I love them all, from the cheesiest Step It Up #39 or whatever to the most discretely dramatic conversation during an Austen Regency dance, I will drink them all up. And I wasn’t disappointed!  This is a […]



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