Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Magic in the Tea and Maybe Something Else

The Elegant Courtly Life of the Tea Witch vol. 1 by Ameko Kaeruda, Yorifuji

by Leave a Comment

By the cover and title, The Elegant Courtly Life of the Tea Witch looks like a mildly entertaining cozy fantasy. Remy is a tea witch, meaning she can magically make perfect tea, which o the one hand is enough that she gets to work in the royal palace, but on the other hand classifies her as basically a servant. Remy seems a little lazy and not minding this, but as you might guess, there’s more to her and her situation (mostly just hints in volume […]

A Hallmark Movie with Talking Plants and Flying Cats

The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst

by Leave a Comment

The Spellshop is not really a cozy romantasy as it has been sold; it is actually a Hallmark movie trying to disguise itself as romantasy. The premise: a young woman flees the city and her big city career to escape a bad thing, moves back to her very rural hometown, meets an annoyingly helpful and cute neighbor, starts a jam-making business. Along for the ride is the sassy sidekick bestie, and a variety of locals, nearly all of whom love her after some initial hesitation, […]

And I have volume three waiting!

The Changeling: Volume 2 by Tina N. Lugo

by Leave a Comment

The Changeling: Volume 2 by Tina N. Lugo is obviously the second in The Changeling series. And therefore, I recommend reading the first book first. And if you can find all three of the currently available titles, you should read them together, as while I was reading this manga series, I was hoping that it is only a trilogy. It is not that I did not like it (I would not have read two volumes if it was horrible), it is just that the story, […]

Just The End of The World

The Dead Take The A Train by Richard Kadrey & Cassandra Khaw

by 4 Comments

This one was intense. I probably should have paid more attention to the terrifying cover illustration. Or maybe not chose to read a gory horror novel while waiting for an inspection at the mechanic. I thought I was going to throw up all over the waiting room. Julie Crews (yes I am humming the Twin Peaks theme song thank you) has been doing the most gruesome, dead end magical jobs in New York City. Now that she’s in her thirties she’s tired of just scraping […]

“When history fails to shed light on the truth, myth creates its own.”

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

by Leave a Comment

No woman should be made to fear that she was not enough. This book is described as “Saint George and the Dragon but make it lesbian”;  I can somewhat see that. It does have basically the myth of Saint George and the Dragon at the heart of it; the Kingdom of Inys, one of the two main locales for the action, is basically founded on a variation of it, and it does certainly have lesbians in it. The basic story is that in the Kingdom […]

I wish that top image was mine (thanks internet) but the review is mine

Brume: The Dragon Awakens by Jérôme Pélissier

by Leave a Comment

Brume: The Dragon Awakens by Jérôme Pélissier, illustrated by Carine Hinder Due September 2025   Read via an online reader copy.  What it is about: Magic, mischief and mystery. Well, there is more than that. Like Brume herself. She is a (publisher says feisty, I say down right bratty at times) young girl who is convinced she can do magic. She wants to be the village witch now that the old village witch has gone missing for several years. She is a child found in […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo