Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Blood Will Out

The Talk of the Town by Lynne Connolly

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After her two tumultuous years wed to the Duke of Whiston come to a fiery end, all Bianca wants is to lead a peaceful life and regain her reputation. But when she meets Alexander Fraser at a house party, she finds herself falling into both love and scandal once again. This is the last book in the Brazen Burrells series, which follows the three penniless but beautiful Burrell sisters as they try to find their fortune in London. I enjoyed the first book, was somewhat […]

What It Says on the Label

Identity by Nora Roberts

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Morgan’s life is destroyed when a serial killer murders her best friend and steals her identity. She moves back in with her family and starts rebuilding her life as well as she can. But she’s not out of danger yet – for it was she who Rozwell had intended to be his victim, and he’s not done with her yet. Of Nora Roberts’s many author hats, I like her romantic suspense books best. They are quite formulaic, I will admit. There is a heroine whose […]

“Come along, Pleiti, you can practice ethnography later. We have a murder to solve.”

The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older

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I loved Malka Older’s The Mimicking of Known Successes. The second Mossa and Pleiti novella, The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles was also a delightful read. There was a moment in the story when I thought back to a conversation I had years ago with a much younger cousin who was still in his 20s. He began expounding on his desire to live somewhere that tested his grit, a place with “real” problems, like on the gritty prestige cop shows he watched. I didn’t point out all […]

Are Hot Dogs Really Just Psychedelic Sandwiches?

Under The Influence by Eliot Rahal, Stefano Simeone

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FBI Agent Cara Cole goes undercover at a university to infiltrate an alleged Internet-based cult called Hot Dog Party, which is led by a teenage influencer who had his fifteen minutes of fame as a meme. I enjoy bizarre horror, I have always liked a good story about cults, and the phenomenon of parasocial relationships is a subject I’ve been hearing more about lately. I also really do not like the taste of hots dogs. As such, this graphic novel sounded right up my alley. […]

Luke endangered my Kindle.

An Unlikely Match for the Governess by Lauri Robinson

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When Luke’s brother threatens to seize custody of his nieces, he and their governess Aislinn decide to get married to provide a more secure home for them – which is only complicated by their attraction to each other. It is so incredibly frustrating when you are going along reading a perfectly good book populated by perfectly good characters acting out a perfectly good plot – and then one of the characters does something so incredibly stupid and, worse, out of character, that it completely tanks your […]

Lady Green Snake and the Golden One

Her Radiant Curse by Elizabeth Lim

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Vanna and Channi are sisters, but they couldn’t be more different – while Vanna is blessed with a strange glowing beauty, Channi has been cursed with the face of a snake and poisonous blood. As Vanna’s seventeenth birthday approaches, Channi grows desperate to prevent her promised death at the hands of the demon witch Angma. I did not realize until about halfway through this book that it is a prequel to Lim’s Six Crimson Cranes duology, an East Asian-influenced retelling of the Six Swans that’s […]



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