Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

You don’t need to remember very much of The Great Gatsby to appreciate retellings

The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo

by 3 Comments

So here’s the thing: I’m not like, super into The Great Gatsby. I read it in school, and like everyone else I’ve gone to a thousand Great Gatsby parties (hopefully we’re all done with them still, because otherwise the thematic appropriateness means we’ll be flappering well into the mid-20s). But from what I remember, this book nails the overall ~*mood*~ of the book, which I feel is best summarized by one of my favorite words: insouciance. Everyone is always bright and fragile and brittle and shiny […]

Turns out I need *some* plot (not very much though)

The Sea Witch by Katee Robert

by 2 Comments

Katee Robert is clearly a master of writing sexy sex times, but reading this novel after reading Neon Gods makes me realize that it’s not (always) enough to have PWP–you also need to have characters and stakes that you can get behind. While I get the outlines of the loose retelling of The Little Mermaid featuring Ursa (Ursula), Alaric (Eric), and Zurielle (Ariel) in a FFM D/s/s, I’m not quite sure that this fully fits into the Thirteen Gods of Olympus universe that Neon Gods takes place in, even […]

Not at all the book I was expecting but that’s my fault (and a thing I have done before)

The Queer Principles of Kit Webb by Cat Sebastian

by 3 Comments

Pride continueth! What I thought this book was about and what it is about are two very different things! And not in a bad way, just in a “oh that’s not what I was expecting!” type of way. Kit reminds me of Katherine from The Witch of Blackbird Pond, so I though that Kit Webb was a female character, but since this has “Queer” in the cover I assumed that the other blonde one on the cover was also female and they were both either androgynous or dressing […]

Very specific genre of older gay men romance, please give me all

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley

by Leave a Comment

Pride continueth with the book which (I thought) closed out my Goodreads reading challenge (as it were, Goodreads did its thing and thought I’d read something twice). So herein is a genre, I feel: the soft shy (gay) man under the heel of The Man falls for the calm aloof quirky gay man who is being investigated by The Man. I felt so very many shades of The House in the Cerulean Sea while reading this, although I did have to double check to make sure that […]

In which a shocking shift in tone and genre works wonderfully

Dream Boy by Jim Grimsley

by 1 Comment

Nathan and his family move around a lot. They have currently found themselves in a rented farmhouse in a small, rural North Carolina community in the 1950s. The family that Nathan’s parents are renting from live in the main house on property. They have a son, Roy, who is a senior at the same high school that Nathan will go to as an underclassman; Roy even drives the local school bus. Very small town. Where Nathan is school-focused and shy, Roy is outgoing and more […]

“Hope, because that is what we must give him, what we must give all of them. Hope and guidance and a place to call their own, a home where they can be who they are without fear of repercussion”

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

by 4 Comments

It’s rare that I say everyone should read a particular book, but this is a book everyone, of all ages, should read.  TJ Klune has spun a beautiful story in The House in the Cerulean Sea.  It’s about finding one’s place in the world, learning to re-write the narrative others have placed on one’s self, that bigotry and fear can be overcome, and that acceptance can be found, starting sometimes as small as with one person to then slowly grow. Linus Baker is an investigator […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo