Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Waiter, there’s a Parent Trap in my dirty talking queer romance!

Truly, Madly, Deeply by Alexandria Bellefleur

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I almost opted to not finish Truly, Madly, Deeply but finally decided that I liked the banter enough to push through. I like Alexandria Bellefleur’s books. She writes some really excellent disaster gays and disaster bisexuals.  What almost made me quit though was Truly’s plan to Parent Trap her newly separated parents. I have never in my life met a divorced couple that shouldn’t have gotten a divorce and a whole bunch of them that hung on to their marriages much longer than was healthy […]

Dorothy Dingle: the Perfect Mother

The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman by Gennifer Choldenko

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After his mother has been gone for a week, eleven-year-old Hank and his toddler sister Boo are forced to seek out the stranger listed as their emergency contact. But with Lou Ann’s help comes social workers and a new school, and Hank worries he might have made a huge mistake. I don’t read much middle grade nowadays, but I was intrigued by this book because I haven’t read any middle grade book dealing with foster care and parentification before. The author’s note about her own […]

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror

Pointe of Pride by Chloe Angyal

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I’ve been waiting for Pointe of Pride since shortly after Pas de Don’t came out. It did not disappoint. I had so much fun reading.  Carly and Nick have strong Elizabeth Bennet/Fitzwilliam Darcy vibes with their prides and their prejudices (masking insecurities) acting as barriers. They have a meet disaster and initially show each other their worst sides. And then Carly hears Nick talking about her in a less than complimentary way. Neither is in a good place emotionally at the start of the book. Carly feels like […]

A History of Royal Intermarriage and its Consequences

Royal Inbreeding and Other Maladies by Juliana Cummings

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Royalty was supposed to rule by divine right and meant to preserve their bloodline, but in their zeal to do so lay the seeds of the madness and maladies that plagued many royal houses. It’s always fun to read about mad royals. Removed by time and societal changes, they don’t feel real enough to be sorry for, and so you can fully indulge in ogling at the bizarre stories without shame. And with unlimited money and power at their disposal, there’s a lot of bizarre […]

A love note to romance novels and healthy masculinity

Fake Flame by Adele Buck

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In the past few years it has been very difficult for me to read and review new to me authors without a deadline imposed externally. As a result, I have a whole bunch of books I really want to read, but I struggle to focus on them unless they are an arc with a looming publication date. Anyway, I was thrilled to see Adele Buck’s Fake Flame on NetGalley because I’m pretty sure I own all her books and have read none of them. My […]

There is a day after calamity

You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian

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One of the most cruelly banal and gloriously affirming things about life is that it keeps on going after we’ve suffered something catastrophic. Cat Sebastian has written a string of dummies in love stories, but this is not that, though she remains strong on atmosphere and feeling. In You Should Be So Lucky, Eddie and Mark are each going through their own catastrophe when they meet. Eddie’s catastrophe is playing out in front of crowds and on TV. Mark’s is so private he can count on […]



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