Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A romance featuring a long-lost boyhood sweetheart, a cat named Satan, Victorian pornography, and a climactic kick in the balls.

Unfit to Print by K.J. Charles

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I just love K.J. Charles so much. She goes where her interests take her, and I love when my interests collide with hers even more. I know I’m always in for not just a good romance with her, but good historical fiction. Here we’ve got a biracial purveyor of Victorian pornography reuniting with his childhood best friend from boarding school, a lawyer of Indian descent who has thought him dead for thirteen years. They meet again when Vikram, the lawyer, is searching for a missing […]

“It’s so much easier to obey orders. It’s not much fun to think.”

Spectred Isle (Green Men, #1) by K.J. Charles

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On the one hand, I wish I would have read this sooner, because it’s great. On the other, I wish I would have saved it, because the sequel seems to be postponed indefinitely for some ground-up retooling, and I would prefer to have it as soon as possible. I found the worldbuilding here to be one of the more intriguing urban fantasy set-ups I’ve read, especially when you factor in that a large part of it uses the consequences of WWI in such a thoughtful […]

Double Cannonballing with a good series-ender.

Subtle Blood (The Will Darling Adventures, #3) by K.J. Charles

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**30 Books in 30 Days** Book 23/30 To be honest, I think if (when) I read all three books in this series back to back in the future, I will bump up both books two and three from four to five stars. It has been top notch in all areas: romance, class examinations, mysteries, historical fiction set in the 1920s, books about friendship, books about secret agents and spies, suspense novels. Seriously, just in all the things this series sets out to do, it succeeds […]

Charming the pants off a fabulous pair of thighs

The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting by K.J. Charles

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This book is light hearted and frothy as a Regency can be in K.J. Charles’ hands.  She has stated that she wrote this to take a break from writing a different one and threw in a lot of the usual tropes.  And it was a lot of fun! Robin and Marianne Loxleigh of Nottinghamshire (hmmm…Locksley?) have arrived in London to find suitable marriage partners.  Short on cash, they aren’t much different than the women seeking to marry a lord, they are just more honest about […]

That rare unicorn, a good middle book.

The Sugared Game (The Will Darling Adventures, #2) by K.J. Charles

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This book wasn’t as purely enjoyable for me as the first one, but it was really an excellent middle book that does what all middle books should do: It furthers the character arcs of the characters we care about so that they are not stagnant and wallowing, it pushes the main story arcs along further and things actually happen, and it provides its own enclosed story arc so that you are left satisfied by the presence of a beginning, middle, and ending within the book […]

”My name, since you raise the topic, is Arthur Aloysius Kimberley de Brabazon Secretan. What would you do in my place?” “Leave the country … You poor bastard, you never stood a chance.” #CBRBingo – The Roaring 20’s

Slippery Creatures (The Will Darling Adventures, #1) by K.J. Charles

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I loved everything about this. K.J. Charles is honestly spoiling me for other historical romance authors. There’s just something about her style (very detailed, historically accurate, flawed but compelling characters) that gets me right in the pleasure center. She also doesn’t just write in one time period or keep it to straight-up romance. She’s always messing around with spy fiction or mystery or golden age pulp (here and Think of England) or jewelry heists or homages to Georgette Heyer regency fiction. Sometimes many of these […]



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