Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Transition Can Save Your Life, But It Won’t Fix It By Itself

Nevada by Imogen Binnie

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Nevada found me at an interesting point in my life. I find myself at a midpoint between the two protagonists, Maria and James, looking forwards and back at them and wondering how I relate to them and how they would relate to me. Maria is a trans woman, living in New York and finding herself without direction. Transition has made her the woman she is today, but on the heels of a breakup with her longterm girlfriend, she’s not really sure who that is anymore. […]

I adore romance trilogies where a trio of lady friends find their perfect partner, one set per book. CBR14 Bingo: Bodies

A Prince on Paper: A Reluctant Royals novel by Alyssa Cole

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CBR14 Bingo: Bodies – There is a pair of attractive bodies on the cover.  Nya discovers what pleasures her body. Is there a name for the sub-set of romance that has a trio of women friends finding their perfect partner across a trilogy?  I enjoy them!  Nora Roberts was my introduction and I devoured several.  Then there was a long hiatus of romance reading.  Cannonball Read inspired me to start seeking out new romances and that brought me to Alyssa Cole, and her “Reluctant Royals” series.  […]

I love epistolary novels but had a major issue with this one

The Jigsaw Jungle by Kristin Levine

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I am a sucker for an epistolary novel, and this one is told in a combination of notes, transcripts, drawings, and so on to give it a sense that it’s a scrapbook. The Jigsaw Jungle follows Claudia’s quest to figure out why her father has vanished. One evening he sends an email saying he will be home late and then never returns. Claudia’s mother then has to go on a work trip to Switzerland and Claudia ends up staying with her grandfather for two weeks while […]

“When I am with you, I feel about as far from anything that has ever hurt me as it is possible to be.”

A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall

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After reading other Alexis Hall books earlier this year, the excellent Boyfriend Material and the quite good Something Fabulous, I became very excited for the promise of A Lady for a Duke. And that excitement was well placed, as I very much enjoyed this outing. While it didn’t quite reach the heights of Boyfriend Material for me, I felt Hall did a much better job with the tone of historical romance than he had in romp in Something Fabulous, even if the pacing bothered me […]

I’m already dead

Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune

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Under the Whispering Door isn’t a sequel to The House in the Cerulean Sea, even though the covers look so similar–and even though TJ Klune uses the word “cerulean” no less than three times throughout the book, which is three times more than I’ve ever seen it in any other book besides The House in the Cerulean Sea. It felt sort of thematically the same, though–a sweet love story, a redemption story, and one about found family. I think I liked The House in the Cerulean Sea better. Under the […]

No One to Really Root For but It’s Still Somehow Pretty Good

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

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She Who Became the Sun definitely lived up to the hype; the characters are interesting and complex, and there is plenty of action and plot. What bothered me was that there was really only one character who stood up for general human decency, not just “I must take charge of my destiny no matter what I have to do (including murdering innocent people and not so innocent people)”. The basic premise is pretty well known already: in a quasi historical early medieval China, a nameless […]



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