Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

done with this world for now :(

Paladin's Hope by T. Kingfisher

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While I enjoyed this last entry in the Saint of Steel series (especially because we do see our favorites from the prior two books!), in a nutshell I think it suffered from 1) being more of a standalone story (with the smooth skin man issue being solved in the prior novel) and 2) the moral of the story overshadowing the main plot as well. In this novel, we have the story of Gay Galen, who knows for a sure 1000% fact that he doesn’t want […]

Writing Your Own Happy Ending

Read Between the Lines by Rachel Lacey

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This one grew on me after kind of a rocky start. A combination of it taking it’s time working through an awkward setup and taking some time to warm up to the writing style meant that I spent the first couple of sessions pretty cold on the whole thing, but I came around by the mid point. Rosie and Jane are many things to each other – Customer and bookshop owner, author and reader, twitter mutuals with a budding friendship, Awkardly, between an online pseudonym […]

Finding Hope in Confronting the Past and the Present

The Secret of You and Me by Melissa Lenhardt

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A lot of the queer fiction I have been recently has featured characters living in either New York or the Pacific North West, or both. Places with widespread acceptance of queerness, or at least enough that the characters are rarely under threat for it within the text, regardless of the real world. The Secret of You and Me on the other hand, draws much of it’s power from the inverse, from a lack of acceptance in community, of what it feels like when you are […]

so very many thoughts about this book

Husband Material by Alexis Hall

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CW: for the ongoing homophobia of Oliver’s family from last book I don’t mean to knock this book at all, but I will say that reading it (and wanting to give it a four) made me realize that Boyfriend Material should have been a five (that has been rectified, even before my re-read) (re-re-read, I should say). I would also recommend anyone who hasn’t re-(re-)read Boyfriend Material since it came out to re-read it before plunging into this novel. I went back and forth on whether I should–full disclosure, […]

lovely standalone book for fans of alternative(?) scifi

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

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CW: so much transphobia. it is overcome, but so much of it. our transgender character also is briefly in a very precarious housing situation that veers into assault. As I started planning for the “I’ve Heard No One Works in August in Europe 2022” trip (pro tip: London is not in Europe, Londoners do work, oops), I started going through my “Want to Read” list here on Goodreads, which I don’t do a good enough job of turning into reality (or curating, for that matter–there […]

“nonetheless, she persisted” — and in style

Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting by Clare Pooley

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CW: remembering now that there is a relationship that is (non-violently) abusive, sort of early stage emotional, except that it’s choreographed well in advance and there’s never any doubt in your mind that it’ll end well (and it does). I think this was a Goodreads recommend, in a subgenre I will call “nonetheless, she persisted” (Lessons in Chemistry comes to mind as the most recent example of this genre that I read). I put it on hold on a whim and quite delightfully opened it when […]



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