Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Prayer for the Cannonball

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers

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I opened A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, read the first sentence and felt my shoulders lower and my jaw unclench. This is a difficult book to review because my response to it is a blend of intellectual and emotional that’s hard to capture. It’s easy to describe one or the other and harder to get communicate “I’m thinking deep thoughts and feeling feelings all over the place!” So just assume that all the thoughts and responses are happening at once. And if I were the […]

Charm, Shame, Desire, Justice, Pride, and Pain

The Bone Orchard by Sara A Mueller

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Charm is a bone witch, a prisoner, and a whore. Alongside the boneghosts that she grew in her laboratory, she runs a brothel at Orchard House. When her keeper the old emperor lies dying, poisoned, he charges her with safeguarding the empire and finding out which of his sons was his killer. Firstly, that cover is utterly beautiful. Now that this important matter is acknowledged, let us go on into the story. I saw a lot of complaints that it was difficult to understand, for […]

The gym is supposed to be my safe space

Set on You by Amy Lea

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First I have to give credit to Amy Lea for her excellent content note at the beginning of Set on You. Lea notes that the book focuses on fitness culture. Lea states she tries to keep it at the healthier end, but for some readers it may still be triggering. Her main character, Crystal Chen, is a personal trainer who has centered her career around body positivity and exercise. The book contains many references to body shaming, misogyny, and online trolls. If exercise and body […]

Then he got down to the serious business of kissing his favorite nemesis.

Kiss Hard by Nalini Singh

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Nalini Singh’s contemporary romances are among my favorite. They each are like a beautiful cupcake that is beautiful and sweet, but also a nutritious and with a memorable flavor. Daniel Esera and Caiti River met as teens when their older siblings, Sailor Bishop and Isa Rain, started dating (and later married). They immediately struck combative sparks and have been nemeses ever since. Caiti was folded into the larger Esera-Bishop clan giving them plenty of opportunities to bicker. They are not out to destroy each other […]

How to Become Tsarina of All the Russias

The Tsarina's Daughter by Ellen Alpsten

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It is nighttime, and Elizabeth Romanov stands in the nursery of her infant cousin the Tsar of All the Russias, contemplating her next move and all the events that brought her here. Though the prequel Tsarina is on my TBR, this is my first taste of Alpsten’s work. Luckily the work stands alone. And it was a fascinating read. I knew very little of the early Romanovs beyond that one of them picked his wife in what was basically a marriage cattle fair, which is probably not […]

No

Partner Track by Cat Wynn

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I picked up Partner Track partly because the cover is so objectively terrible I felt like they were trying to keep me from reading the book. But I had also heard that even though it looks like it takes place in a megachurch, the book was high heat. The book does have a lot of sex and does not take place in a megachurch. Perdie is an associate at a firm in Charleston, SC. When we meet her, she is in a deposition and just […]



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