Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

There are a lot of good reasons to not finish a book

The Next Best Fling by Gabriella Gamez

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I  was trying to get past a scene in Gabriella Gamez’s The Next Best Fling for two weeks. At first I thought the problem was that I have been tired and my job is very stressful right now. I finally pushed through, got to the next scene, and realized I am not going to be able to finish this book. The primary antagonist is a narcissist. Gamez has written the controlling and manipulative dynamics of his relationship with the two main characters so well that […]

The Dark Corners of the Past

Great Scandals of the Victorians by Debbie Blake

Public Faces, Secret Lives by Wendy L. Rouse

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Great Scandals of the Victorians: Disreputable Stories from the Royal Court to the Stage – 3.5 stars For all that Victorians had a reputation for being straitlaced, they had their fair share of scandals – and some of them ended up having major effects on contemporary society, sometimes even driving forth social changes which still affect us today. I love a good gossip session about people I’ve never met, which is why history is one of my favorite subjects. In this book, we learn about […]

The Intersection of Love and the Law

You'll Do: A History of Marrying for Reasons Other Than Love by Marcia A. Zug

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In this short history of the legalities of marriage in the United States, Zug takes us through how marriage as an institution has shifted over the centuries and how the many reasons for marrying for something other than love, such money, status, or legal benefits, played its part in that. Coming from a culture where marriage is considered an essential step of adulthood and is still sometimes arranged by one’s parents, I never really thought much about it, or why the legal institution of marriage […]

Dynasty Building in Tudor and Stuart England

A Woman of Influence: The Spectacular Rise of Alice Spencer in Tudor England by Vanessa Wilkie

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Alice Spencer, the youngest daughter of a wealthy farmer, was just another building block in the Spencer dynasty, but the marriage that made her the Countess of Derby was just the start of her spectacular rise through the ranks of Tudor England. This book answered a very important question that’s been bothering me for a very long time: Why did medieval aristocrats splash around so much money on frivolous luxuries? I knew the answer had something to do with amassing power and influence, but it’s […]

Joy, fusion bbq, music, and love jump off the page

A Little Kissing Between Friends by Chencia C. Higgins

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I fell in love with this book in the first paragraph. I fell in love with Cyn and her daddy in the first chapter. I fell in love with Juleesa in Chapter 2 and by Chapter 5 I loved everybody and everything about this book. A Little Kissing Between Friends is a love letter to multi-generational community, friendships, music and food. Chencia C. Higgins starts with Cyn remembering the day she let her daddy know that she liked girls. It came out as a part of […]

Matchmaking for the Romance Averse

Calm the Storm by Penny Fairbanks

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Felicity doesn’t want to get married after a lifetime of being neglected by her parents, but when a mysterious matchmaker throws her together with the visiting Atticus, they end up changing each other’s lives. This is the second book in the Society of Swans series, which revolves around a group of friends who receive letters from an anonymous matchmaker called Lady Swan. I haven’t read the first book, but this works well as a standalone. I wanted to read this book because I was intrigued […]



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