Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

An excellent middle book in this historical romance trilogy.

Beguiled (Enlightenment, #2) by Joanna Chambers

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This series continues to be the perfect blend of historical fiction and romance. Most historical romance authors use the historical setting as a backdrop and creator of atmosphere, or convert it into a sort of fantasy realm to explore other things, which can be really fun! But as I said in my review of the first book in this series, there’s just something so pleasurable about stone cold history being actually explored in this format. In the first book, it was the fallout from a […]

Not a book for me.

Memorial by Bryan Washington

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I really need to stop ordering the lit-fic option from Book of the Month. It so very rarely ends well. The premise here is that Mike and Benson are a couple. Mike is a chef and Benson is a daycare worker. Mike’s father is dying of cancer, and so he decides one day to go to Japan to mend their relationship, leaving Benson alone in their one bedroom apartment with his visiting mother, who only arrived that morning, also from Japan. Also, their relationship is […]

I want follow through, at least once

Lumberjanes 16 Mind over Mettle by Shannon Watters, Kat Leyh, AnneMarie Rogers

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I’m starting to get a little bored with this current Lumberjanes pattern: focus on a specific scout who has a personal issue, adventure ensues, friendship lesson is acquired and possibly some personal growth. This time it’s Mal who feels like she’s the scaredy-cat of the group and wants to be braver; the thing I don’t get is why she goes to Ripley the team goof for help. Ripley is totally carefree and runs into everything without thinking; I wouldn’t call that brave, I’d be calling […]

You should read this book even though I did not like it

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

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Aster is low-deck woman on the spaceship Matilda. The citizens of Matilda are stratified across racial lines: darker people of color on the lower decks with lighter skinned citizens occupying the upper decks. As you might guess, the lower decks have increased police presence and poor living conditions. The upper decks have more freedom and significantly better quarters and living conditions. Sound familiar? The citizens of Matilda were long ago promised that they were on a journey to a new land, yet that promise seems further and further […]

Wow, Thanks Samantha

Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby

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I think Samantha Irby and I could be friends, at least based on the essays in this book. Her frank style and realness is endearing and I felt truly understood by a person I don’t know. Wow, No Thank You is a collection of humor essays, and it is also a collection of truth. We’re really all so very tired, aren’t we? And isn’t everything we’re doing mostly exhausting and really we’d rather not be doing? Samantha Irby tells it like it is and delights […]

This Year’s Girl

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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Early on in The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, I was getting frustrated. I wanted to know why Taylor Jenkins Reid was using the journalist framing device to extract such detail around the curiosity of a multiple married woman. Don’t get me wrong; I know celebrity relationships are a constant source of fascination with folks. But I just didn’t feel like it made for an interesting story. I wanted to read about this fictional Evelyn Hugo staring in fictional movies, getting into fictional Hollywood feuds, etc. And […]



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