Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Unique takes on age-old tales for a YA audience

At Midnight by Dahlia Adler

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Dahlia Adler has been pumping out YA anthologies based on familiar lore for a while. At MIDNIGHT, twists on popular fairy tales, is her most recent work. It’s also the first I’ve read, though I have her Poe remix on my shelf, and the Shakespeare remix is definitely going on my wishlist. It is a fantastic homage to favorite fairy tales. Almost all of them bring something new to each tale, but here are my favorites: Adler’s Rumpelstiltskin, which turns the gold-making goblin into a […]

“You can have anything once you admit you deserve it”

If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo

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#CBR11 Bingo: Own Voices (the book is about a trans girl, written by a trans woman) (Can also easily fit into the categories of Youths!, Award Winner and/or Rainbow Flag) Official book description: Amanda Hardy is the new girl in school. Like anyone else, all she wants is to make friends and fit in. But Amanda is keeping a secret, and she’s determined not to get too close to anyone. But when she meets sweet, easygoing Grant, Amanda can’t help but start to let him into […]

I read this for the Read Harder Challenge, but I would have read it anyway.

If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo

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So I wrote in my initial review of this book: “Something about the climax of this book didn’t work perfectly for me, will try to suss out why later, but the rest of this was lovely. Really glad I read it. You know a book is good when you’re so caught up in it you don’t notice you’re reaching the last pages, and then it’s over and you’re sad.” It’s been a little too long since I finished this now, and I can’t really remember […]

Thank you, Julie Murphy, for continuously not sucking.

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I’m sorry to say that Meet Cute was my biggest reading disappointment of 2018 so far. It had everything I thought I wanted: how-we-met short stories from some of the best YA authors out there — including Julie freaking Murphy — and a recommendation from Rainbow Rowell. I assumed it would be a delight. And some of it was. I had never heard of Ibi Zoboi, but her story “Hourglass” was my favorite of the bunch. She told a story about Cherish, a tall African-American […]

“You can have anything, once you admit you deserve it.”

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I am on a new medication that apparently causes insomnia. Unfortunately, I discovered this at 1:30 on Saturday morning, while at a friend’s house. I woke up, on a strange couch, and could not fall back asleep for anything. Since I wasn’t home, I couldn’t just turn on the TV or grab a book or whatever. So I went on Overdrive, downloaded this book, and read the whole thing. “For as long as I could remember, I had been apologizing for existing, for trying to […]

One voice with the burden of representing many in the mainstream YA landscape

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I’m going to keep this simple: as much as it was the case with The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian I don’t have it in me to *critique* If I Was Your Girl on the same level as I would a more … normative … book. It’s is very simple, mostly very pleasant, with Amanda, a milquetoast, blank-slate protagonist who wants nothing more than to be liked, to fit in, to have friends, to be confident, to be safe, and to be […]



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