Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A book overflowing with queer kindness

Tell Me Anything by Skye Kilaen

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The thing about Skye Kilaen is that she has so much compassion for her characters and her stories are so full of kindness that when she rips my still beating heart out of my chest in chapter one, I keep reading because I trust my heart in her hands. Skye writes beautiful LGBTQ+ romances, she’s self published, and unless you hang out in the right book circles, you probably don’t know who she is. But you should, because she’s so gooooooooood. Tell Me Anything is […]

A Romance That Needs More Magic

The Sumage Solution by G. L. Carriger

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I am not sure how or why I ended up with The Sumage Solution; I do like Gail Carriger (or G.L. Carriger as she is here), but straight up romance is really really not my genre. The world of the story is probably my favorite part; it’s modern day San Francisco, but it’s mostly supernatural beings. Our main love connection is a mage and a werewolf, but some of the other couples involve werewolf-merman, a pair of kitsune, and a kelpie and her partner (species […]

Two Gaming Nerds Go on a Road Trip and….

Conventionally Yours by Annabeth Albert

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I’m not sure how Conventionally Yours ended up on my radar since I’m not a reader of romance novels generally speaking. Basically, it’s a queer romance with a twist on the standard enemies to lovers plot, namely the setting is serious card gaming and convention. On the one side, there’s Conrad the good-looking friendly guy who seems to have the perfect social life and image, but is actually dealing with major issues in his life. On the other side, there’s Alden, the seemingly uptight, prissy, […]

When the romance isn’t too believable

Moonstruck Vlume 3 Troubled Waters by Grace Ellis, Shae Beagle

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I wasn’t too sure about the Moonstruck series after volume 2; volume 3 has redeemed things a bit. Even though it kind of splits of the coffee shop gang a little, with Chet (centaur) going off for an internship and Julie goes with Selena to a mermaid Festival. Most of the volume follows Julie and Selena, who meet up with Selena’s friend and roomie, the mermaid Skyla (Julie apparently has never met her and didn’t know Skyla and Selena live together). Naturally things don’t go […]

Atmospheric, dark, and lovely

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

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[Read as an ebook from the local library] Books like this generally don’t hit my radar. I do love well executed historical fiction, but as you might know from reading my review of The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep, I’m not a Dickens person. Victorian England is not my particular wheelhouse. But I do like Korean film, and The Handmaiden, Park Chan-wook’s sumptuous 2016 film, follows the initial plot of this book relatively closely, so I was curious to read the original. Because this is […]

A Love Story Even a Non-Romance Person Can Fall For

Winter's Orbit by Everina Maxwell

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Romance is really not my genre; for one thing I’m very much ace and spent most of my growing up time wondering what was wrong with all the story people who apparently have no self-control with the lust and related emotional stuff. However, sometimes, there comes along a romance that has enough other elements, like actually interesting characters, plot, and/or setting, that I can appreciate the whole thing, romance focus or not. Winter’s Orbit is one of these kinds of stories. In some ways this […]



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