Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A lovely, sex-positive, sex-heavy but asexual friendly start to the year.

Business or Pleasure by Rachel Lynn Solomon

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A quite pleasing book to open the year on, although I am a bit sad it wasn’t five stars, since this was one of my five-star predictions from a several months ago. OH WELL. The sex lessons trope can be so good when done well, and it was done very very well here. Our main character is Chandler—a ghostwriter and former journalist who is still trying to find herself in her early thirties. She takes a ghostwriting job for an actor who is famous for […]

“We put so much effort into it, and I tanked it by being a horny goblin.”

Make You Mine This Christmas by Lizzie Huxley-Jones

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#CBR15 Passport Challenge: Recommended by a friend (I’m not sure if I would have ever discovered this book if it wasn’t for the amazing Narfna/Ashley A lot of contemporary romances get described as rom-coms, and in a lot of cases this is just lies, spouted by the publishers to get more people to pick up the books. Make You Mine This Christmas, on the other hand, is both romantic and very funny. I could easily see it as a film in my head. Haf (it’s […]

A burnt out Millennial medium and the ghost of her dead best friend solve crimes. Yes you should read it.

Grave Expectations (Grave Expectations, #1) by Alice Bell

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I knew as soon as I read the blurb for this one early in 2023 that it was going to be a book For Me. Sometimes I do turn out to be wrong about these things, but in this case I was very much right. I had such a good time with this book. (And I’ve had ridiculously good luck with mysteries this year, most of which are having fun with the traditional mystery format/genre). The premise here is that Claire is a thirty-something down-on-her-luck […]

“When a man dies from a bullet entering his chest, it’s a homicide. When a man dies from a meteorite landing on his head, it’s a Tragedy. Don’t use bullets. Use meteorites. Don’t commit a homicide. Commit a Tragedy.”

Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide by Rupert Holmes

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Basically, this book is murder heists. As I finally sit down to start typing this review, I still haven’t decided if I’m going to round up or down from my 4.5 star rating, so I guess we’ll see what I talk myself into by the end of these several paragraphs. Rupert Holmes, of “Piña Colada Song” fame, has given mystery lovers a real treat. Especially if you like mysteries that play with genre and format, which this very much does. Something I didn’t know going […]

“I suspect if I had owned a border collie, this story would have a very different ending, and I probably would not have been around to type it up. But I had Bongo, and he saved our lives because he is simple and made of nose.”

The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher

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Gotta write this review today because I’m about to start The Hollow Places, and I don’t want my brain to get to confused about it. This book was ooky spooky and I enjoyed it very much. The atmosphere was A+ for me, the MC alone in her evil grandmother’s hoarder house (the book is clear that her being a hoarder is in no way related to her being evil, but the doll room is def related) and a THING in the woods. The THING omg it […]

“There is nothing wrong with being a monster.”

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

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?????? It’s been weeks now and I still don’t know what to make of this one. A very dark and weird take on The Little Mermaid story, with a cheeky little nod to Hans Christian Andersen even; mostly this was an exercise in imagery and I didn’t connect to the characters, but I can’t deny it has style. The mermaid here was essentially stolen from the sea, forced to marry a prince, had her tongue cut out, and then gave birth to daughters who then […]



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