Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Keeping Hope in the Jungle

Sisters Under the Rising Sun by Heather Morris

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The passengers of the Vyner Brooke are pitched from the frying pan to the fire when the ship upon which they have been fleeing the Japanese invasion of Singapore is sunk off the shores of Indonesia. The women and children, musician Norah Chambers and nurse Nesta James among them, must survive in jungle camps until the end of the war. I am continuing my informal journey through the Pacific theatre of World War 2 with Sisters Under the Rising Sun, which chronicles the lives of a […]

A queer retelling of Pretty Woman

Boyfriend Subscription by Steven Salvatore

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Steven Salvatore described his adult romance debut, Boyfriend Subscription, as a queer retelling of Pretty Woman. I love a queer retelling, but Pretty Woman was never one of my favorite movies. I never believed that Richard Gere’s character was going to value Julia Robert’s character beyond the end of the movie. Once the glow of the new relationship wore off, I was pretty sure he was going to hold having been a sex worker against her. Salvatore takes care of that issue by making Cole, the […]

Lightning Strike

What is Love by Jen Comfort

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Jen Comfort became an autobuy author for me when I read Midnight Duet, her utterly bananas and brilliant gender-flipped retelling of The Phantom of the Opera. Her banter is top notch. Her characters are substantial. Teddy Ferguson falls in love with Maxine Hart after she steals his lucky donut, takes one bite, corrects his trivia factoid, and then throws the rest of the donut away like a beautiful agent of chaos. I also fell in love with Maxine at that moment. There is, I think, […]

The Nazi Handmaid’s Tale

Widowland by C.J. Carey

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In a 1953 England under the control of German forces, life is good for Rose Ransom, a member of the privileged Geli class – or at least as good as life can be for a woman in the oppressive regime. But when she is given the task of infiltrating Widowland in search of possible subversives, she comes to learn she might have more power than she always thought. The premise of this book caught my eye immediately. I haven’t really read alternate history books before, […]

“Separately, each cloud can block the wind. Together, we might determine its flow.”

Kill Her Twice by Stacey Lee

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Sisters May and Gemma Chow are working hard to keep their family afloat while their father is away being treated for tuberculosis. When they discover the body of Lulu Wong, a former classmate and rising Hollywood star on the outskirts of Chinatown, they set out to solve the mystery of her death. I’m always on the lookout for historical fiction that centers the experience of people who were marginalized during the era of the setting, because to see history through their eyes is usually completely […]

“My name’s Willa, and I believe I have your dog.”

Do Me a Favor by Cathy Yardley

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Do Me a Favor begins as all great books do, with a dog. Okay, that’s probably not true of all great books, but this one does begin with Willa finding a dog in her garage during a thunderstorm. The dog, named Noodle, belongs to Hudson’s semi-adult son. Hudson comes to get him (a couple of times because Noodle loves a garage adventure) and Hudson and Willa start to connect. I really enjoyed Cathy Yardley’s Ponto Beach series, but I am loving her books with older […]



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