Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

one last re-read of a book from 2021, which is a great sign

Winter's Orbit by Everina Maxwell

by 1 Comment

Strong content warnings, from the author: https://everinamaxwell.com/content-wa… Thanks again to the dual recommendations from llamareadsbooks and CoffeeShopReader both! Re-read (October 2021, review December 2021): I wanted to also re-read this book after The Charm Offensive and my re-read of Boyfriend Material, so I suppose the best theme you could stitch would be “gay HEAs, location notwithstanding.” I agree with the original reviews that this isn’t really a romance first scifi novel, but perhaps it’s more of a mood that you have to go into it with. On this second re-read, I found it very romantic, […]

Worth the hype!

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

by Leave a Comment

This book is a delight.  It is charming, and thought provoking, and overall just lovely.  It takes place in a world not too far off from our own, only there is magic.  The magic may have been hidden away for quite some time, but those who were magical were probably forced to show themselves.  The “people in charge” decided that in order to “include” these magical beings into society, they must be registered.  For what purpose remains unclear.     Mr. Linus Baker, our protagonist, works […]

A cloth mage, a journalist, and some bad guys walk into a bar (this does happen at one point)

Innate Magic by Shannon Fay

by Leave a Comment

Innate Magic is an alternate history dark fantasy set in 20th century London. “The War” and associated arms races have happened and there’s the threat of some new major conflict on the horizon; this is mostly background though. Paul Gallagher and his best friend/found brother Thomas Dawes have just graduated magic college ready to pursue careers as Cloth Magicians; it seems like there’s basically 2 types of allowed magic: cloth and book. The ‘innate magic’ of the title is technically only allowed to one person, […]

Anachronism isn’t always a bad thing

The Perks of Loving a Wallflower by Erica Ridley

by Leave a Comment

I think this book is probably the most successful attempt I’ve read (not…that I have read many) at reconciling the dual desires of readers to a) have the lesbians b) wear the corsets. The other paradox that readers want is aristocracy romance + sex, and you usually get there by having the woman not be a full on virginal lady but instead some sort of exception case (like: widowed, openly an escort, lacking a chaperone who would care). So here, the escape valve is a […]

another gripe: for an advice columnist, our protagonist is really clueless

Perfect on Paper by Sophie Gonzales

by Leave a Comment

Four stars for the themes of biphobia, internalized or not, but knock down to three stars for the over-reliance on trope and the underwhelming exploration of said biphobia themes. The main conceit of this novel is the part that somewhat lost me. There’s a locker in school into which high schoolers drop their romantic issues for Darcy Phillips, 16-going-on-17-year old wunderkid, to reply to. Do not worry though–Darcy is clear to tell us that she’s very rigorous about the whole affair and pulls from psychology […]

The HP fandom has evolved in such lovely ways since I’ve been involved

Grounds for Divorce by Tepre

by 7 Comments

I have been meaning to read this for ages. I actually told my friend over whatsapp that I was going to read this sometime late 2020, and then proceeded to…not. Pardon the digression, but: one of the biggest personal fallouts from the whole “JKR is an unrepentant transphobe” issue is that I’ve felt weird and icky reading fanfic. Which is sad, and doesn’t make sense! Sort of like transphobia! The vast, vast majority of fanfic writers, and certainly all the ones that I’ve avidly followed, […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo