Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

If novel reading were really bad for the health, we all on this site would have perished long ago.

The Belle of Belgrave Square (Belles of London, #2) by Mimi Matthews

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Didn’t expect to read this whole thing in a day! But that is exactly what I did. I really, really like Mimi Matthews’s style. This is the second book of hers I’ve given 4.5 stars. I think I’ll have to look up her backlist sometime soon, especially since the last book in this series (Belles of London) has a character from a previous series (Parish Orphans of Devon) as the hero. The Belle of Belgrave Square follows the second of our equestriennes, Julia Wychwood, who […]

“There are two kinds of people in this world: those who live with shame, and those who die from it.”

Lone Women by Victor LaValle

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I really liked this one! But the ending didn’t do as much for me as the first 1/3 did. It all wrapped up too fast and too neatly for me. I wanted to see the struggle and the nitty gritty details! But then again, I nearly always appreciate a longer book over a shorter one, so this very could be just a me thing here and you might love it (as the rest of my book club did!) Lone Women takes place around 1915 in […]

I waited too long to read this one :(

The Secret History of the Pink Carnation (Pink Carnation, #1) by Lauren Willig

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DNF @ 47% Dang, two DNFs in one day (the other was The Sun and the Void)! I got 200 pages in to this and realized I felt like I was just wasting my own time, so I stopped. This is a book that ten years ago—so a LOT closer to when I actually bought it—I would have probably given it four stars and then read at least the next two books in the series. Instead, I waited a ridiculously long time (this is now […]

If books could kill. (I do not regret this pun.)

Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs

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Ink Blood Sister Scribe is a contemporary fantasy novel that treads some well-worn tropes and plot structures that make it rather predictable, but because of the execution, still very enjoyable. If you haven’t spent your life reading fantasy books, you probably won’t think this was as predictable as I did, so in that way it might be a good intro to fantasy book, particularly since it’s set in our world. But there really is enough here to interest regular fantasy readers as well (unless you’re […]

I’m pretty sure I will forget almost everything about this in less than a year.

It Happened One Fight by Maureen Lee Lenker

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I pre-ordered a signed and personalized copy of this book from The Ripped Bodice because I really like Maureen Lee Lenker after listening to her appear many times on one of my favorite podcasts, Screen Drafts. She always comes on and talks about classic movies, and she talks about them with such confidence, knowledge, and deep affection; I like her so much that I decided beforehand that I was going to love her romance novel just as much. Well. It Happened One Fight (the title […]

“We shall be useful. But just as importantly we shall be defiant, occasionally ill-mannered, and completely indomitable.”

The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies by Alison Goodman

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The historical detail of this book was incredibly pleasing (the afterword notes that she submitted 2/3 of it as her dissertation for her PhD!) and I am definitely in for reading more from this series. My favorite thing from this author that I’ve read by quite a large margin. I was pretty sure going in that this was a romance, because of the cover and the ladies in dresses, but like the cover (which hides its weapons amidst the folds of a dress) this book […]



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