Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I finally tackle the Temeraire series (four months ago). #CBRBingo – And So It Begins

His Majesty's Dragon (Temeraire, #1) by Naomi Novik

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This is why I never DNF books. Well, that and the OCD (legit, not just using it facetiously). I had a hard time getting into this (I’ve had a hard time getting into several books the last couple of months–my brain is not wanting to cooperate with me). It took me what felt like weeks to get past the first thirty pages. And it’s not like what was there was bad, I just couldn’t engage myself in it for some reason. Novik styles the book […]

The book that ate November (The Count of Monte Cristo)

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4.5 stars Young sailor Edmond Dantés is well-meaning, kind and really rather naive, wanting nothing more than to make enough money to take care of his elderly father and marry his beloved Mercedes. There are other, less well-meaning people in his life who want what he has and are prepared to frame Dantés for treason to get these things. While celebrating his engagement to Mercedes, Dantés is arrested, charged with aiding in a plot to restore the exiled Napoleon to the throne. The anonymous scheming […]

A historical romance with double agents

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I’m back! Did you miss me? I finally finished enough work to start catching up on my reviews. Brace yourselves for quite a few in the coming week. This is the fifth book in Joanna Bourne’s Spymasters series, but as the books are written out of chronological order historically speaking, and some overlap (for those who HAVE read the previous books in the series, there’s a really interesting blog post here explaining where the various books fit into the historical time line), it’s not actually that big […]

Has anyone ever told you that you haggle divinely? That the simple beauty of your self-interest is enough to bring a man to his knees?

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This is the fourth book in the series, and as such, not the best place to start reading. This review will also contain some spoilers for book 3, The Deception of the Emerald Ring, so skip this review if you’re not up to date. Despite being one of the acclaimed beauties of the ton, Miss Mary Alsworthy is facing her third season. The only actual marriage proposals she’s received were from unsuitable candidates, and her attempt to secure a rich husband failed spectacularly when her intended […]

I find that there is very little to excite the attention in a glass of lemonade. It is so uniformly yellow.

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When Letitia “Letty” Alsworthy discovers that her older sister, the stunning Mary, is about to elope with her admirer, Lord Geoffrey Pinchingdale-Snipe, she is determined to stop it. Their family is in dire financial straits as it is, the scandal of an elopement would be devastating for them. Unfortunately, Letty finds herself whisked away by the crabby coachman, and in the arms of the besotted Geoffrey before she’s able to stop anything at all. Add to the fact that some of Geoff’s friends conveniently happen […]

Life-long friends fall in love while hunting for spies

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This is the second book in The Pink Carnation series, with events following on pretty much directly from the end of The Secret History of the Pink Carnation. If you want to avoid spoilers for the first book, you should probably skip this review for now. Eloise Kelly has discovered the secret identity of the elusive British spy known as the Pink Carnation, but wants to discover more about the gentleman spies of the Napoleonic era. She goes with Colin Selwick to his country house, to search through the […]



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