Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“If you think you didn’t save me too, you couldn’t be more wrong.”

Where You're Planted by Melanie Sweeney

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This is a sneaky, emotional book about what community is and what it means to people.   I don’t remember exactly what made me put this on my to read list back in April, but one of the reviewers I follow reviewed it as an ARC in March and described its vibe as “echoes of Nora Roberts with a flair of Anita Kelly + Kate Clayborn that really made me smile and tugged at my heart”. Okay, La Nora has had diminishing returns over the […]

I miss publicly funded library systems that cover entire regions ❤️ NYPL

Where You're Planted by Melanie Sweeney

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Bingo: work! hot take bad hurricane preparedness abounds in this book that preaches flying by the seat of your pants and fixing the resultant issues as… independent women being feminist? Our main characters here are Tansy, a children’s services librarian who becomes the de facto branch manager after a “thousand-year-flood” ruins her Houston area library building, and Jack, a surly gardener and newly promoted Head Director of a botanical garden in the same region. With the library out of commission and half of the staff […]

A Gorgeous Love Letter to Libraries, Gardens, and the People who Create Community Spaces

Where You’re Planted by Melanie Sweeney

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I really enjoyed Melanie Sweeney’s debut, Take Me Home, so I had high expectations for her sophomore book, Where You’re Planted. My expectations were blown out of the water. Where You’re Planted inserted itself right into my chest. It is definitely in the top 5 books I’ve read this year. Melanie Sweeney writes with tremendous emotional intelligence. This book is a love letter to libraries, gardens, and the public employees who create public spaces and build communities. It’s for the people who hate to ask […]

All I’ve wanted these past few days is to get as close to you as you’ve somehow gotten to me.

Take Me Home by Melanie Sweeney

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Melanie Sweeney’s Take Me Home is a wonderfully assured debut romance. There’s frenemies to lovers, a road trip, only one bed, a promise to not catch feelings if they just mess around over the holidays, and that emotional growth spurt that happens in your mid twenties. Hazel and Ash are such lovely characters to spend time with – funny, smart, generous, and doing their best to be good people. They are both adults, doing adult things, taking care of their adult lives, but kind of still […]



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