Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Sunshine and grumpy: Christmas edition

Magically Generated by Jackie Lau

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CBR17 Bingo: Arts (Everett makes detailed sketches before making his amazing snow sculptures) This was an ARC from the author. My opinions are my own. Nora Blackburn no longer believes in love and is super wary of anything that might be a fraud or scam. Her previous relationship was with a man who scammed her out of thousands of dollars, and she’s determined not to be fooled again. Her state of constant hyperawareness and scepticism of everyone and everything also means she isolates herself, and she […]

“Oona was still learning, everytime she leaped no matter the year someone important would be absent from life.”

Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore

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Buzzword Title Challenge 25: Alliteration Buzzword Cover Challenge 25: Eyes CBR17 Bingo: O (A book title that starts with O) Official plot summary (because I read this back in July): Just because life may be out of order, doesn’t mean it’s broken. It’s New Year’s Eve 1982, and Oona Lockhart has her whole life before her. At the stroke of midnight, she will turn nineteen, and the year ahead promises to be one of consequence. Should she go to London to study economics, or remain […]

“Wealth is just security. Luxury is living care free.”

The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater

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4.5 stars CBR17 Bingo: Culture (A lot of people from a lot of different backgrounds, countries and cultures are forced together for a time during World War II) Official plot summary: January 1942. The Avallon Hotel & Spa has always offered elegant luxury in the wilds of West Virginia, its mountain sweetwater washing away all of high society’s troubles. Local girl-turned-general manager June Porter Hudson has guided the Avallon skillfully through the first pangs of war. The Gilfoyles, the hotel’s aristocratic owners, have trained her […]

No Wings Needed, but Maybe a Better Editor?

We Need No Wings by Ann Dávila Cardinal

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cbr17bingo – Rec’d (found on a list of book suggestions for National Hispanic Heritage Month) I’m going to let the first line of the book do some heavy lifting here: “The first time Tere Sánchez levitated, she was in the garden.” Tere is a 60-year-old widow who has been grieving her husband’s death for the past year while taking a leave from her work as a professor. Understandably, the levitation freaks her out. She recalls that her family is distantly related to Saint Teresa of […]

Not Exactly Mexican Gothic, But Close Enough

The Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzalez James

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cbr17bingo Border Now this was an interesting one.  Mexican Gothic is my jam, and I thought that this would be along that vein, but it turned out to be definitely its own thing – an intriguing cross between fictionalized family lore and magical realism.  And when I looked up the translation of Part Two – El Tragabalas, I discover that it is the book’s title in Spanish, but it is also the title of a fairly well known Mexican movie from the mid-60s, and the […]

“You had a chance to ask the universe for something,” Jamie says. “But instead you chose to register a complaint.”

Lessons in Magic and Disaster by Charlie Jane Anders

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Lessons in Magic and Disaster has been so hard to review because my response to it has been deeply personal. It’s an achingly beautiful book. The ache starts in the opening paragraph, Jamie has never known what to say to her mother. And now–when it matters most of all, when she’s on a rescue mission–she knows even less.” Jamie discovered as a child that she could do magic. If she found a spot in nature at the intersection of cultivated and abandoned, and wished for […]



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