Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“You know who you are, I know who you are, and our Lady does, too.”

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

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#CBR15 Passport Challenge: Different genres (paranormal fantasy) Being a queer teen can be difficult enough, even if you don’t come from a long line of magic users with very traditional gender roles. In Yadriel’s family, the brujos can summon the spirits of the dead and help them find peace in the afterlife. The brujas have tremendous healing powers. However, Yadriel’s family won’t let him go through the traditional rite for brujos, because of the gender he was born with. The only ones who seem to […]

I’m sorry, “heavily fringed orbs” is not a sexy way to talk about your international anti-magic stalker’s pretty eyes, and all y’all are dumbasses

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray

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Ugh, this was an annoying disappointment. I had read one Libba Bray book previously that I liked, about teenage pageant contestants stranded on an island, and hoped that this book about teenage witches at a finishing school for girls would be equally fun. Instead, it’s annoying, and the girls are annoying, and the book would’ve been a short story if anybody had bothered to SPEAK TO EACH OTHER. Plus, redemption arcs for the mean girls? That is a suspension bridge of disbelief too far for […]

Crime and Poetry

Crime and Poetry by Amanda Flower

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I discovered Amanda flower a little over a year ago, and I love these books. This is the first one in a new to me, series, The Magical Book Shop. They are fluff for sure, but they always keep me reading, it’s never too obvious who did it, and the characters are fun.

Halloweentown Gets Sexy

The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling

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I don’t typically like romance unless it’s got some other genre along to help build story and character; just the relationship parts gets kind of one note. I picked up The Ex Hex and it’s got enough magic going wrong that it works with the relationship. What I don’t quite get is why/how putting a Welsh magic town in the North Georgia mountains is even slightly believable. I know this is both romance and magic, so it’s not exactly realism forward, btu that’s going too […]

“Like any dealer he was watching for the card that is so high and wild”

Every Gift a Curse (2023) by Caroline O'Donoghue

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“I can feel our bravery fall away as we journey into the wood. We are not built for this. We are not the folksy teenagers you see in adventure stories. There is no one who’s a dab hand at archery, or who can chart our journey by looking at the last few visible stars.” (371-372) Every Gift a Curse is the third and final in Irish author Caroline O’Donoghue’s YA ‘Gifts’ trilogy, following All Our Hidden Gifts (2021) and The Gifts That Bind Us (2022). […]

“You rescue me. I rescue you. That’s how this works.”

Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo

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This is the second book in the Alex Stern series. This review will contain some spoilers for the first book in the series, Ninth House because I’m not sure how to review it without referencing things that happened in the last book. So if you’re new to this series, start there. Darlington is still missing, “in Spain” to those not in the know, and in Hell, possibly dead to those initiated in the secrets of Lethe House. Galaxy “Alex” Stern doesn’t have a lot of […]



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