Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

And now he was looking at her as if she were a cake, if cakes were also religious icons…

The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes by Cat Sebastian

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I thought The Queer Principles of Kit Webb made me swoon, but I was unprepared for the vertigo inducing swoon of The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes. First I’m going to share two quotes and these ought to be all the advertisement you need to sell you on this book. Next, I’m going to warn you that you cannot read this gem of a book without reading reading it’s predecessor, The Queer Principles of Kit Webb, and then I’m going to add some spoilers for Kit Webb. […]

An Unconditional American

Go Back to Where You Came From by Wajahat Ali

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Wajahat Ali’s Go Back to Where You Came From and Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American is an enormously readable punch in the gut. Ali is a gifted storyteller. He dissects his life and the world around him with a fine scalpel. He is funny, smarter than me, and can make me look at the ugly underbelly while I’m laughing until I’m not laughing anymore. As I told an earlier fan, I would love to move back to my ancestral land of the […]

A Stunning Queer Romance Debut

Love & Other Disasters by Anita Kelly

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I received an ARC of Love & Other Disasters from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Love & Other Disasters publishes January 18th, 2022. I love when you can tell that a book was written from an authentic place, that the author is taking their own feelings, their own emotions, and building out from there to tell an honest story that they hope will resonate with readers. Anita Kelly (she/they) does just that in Love & Other Disasters and I’m so […]

An interesting failure.

True Crime Story by Joseph Knox

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Thanks to Netgalley and Recorded Books for the audio ARC. It hasn’t affected the content of my review. This was an impulse request from Netgalley because I thought it was a true crime story, as one might expect from the title. It, my friends, is not. It is a fictional thriller/mystery written sort of in the style of a true crime book. I’ve never, ever seen an actual true crime book structured like this, though. It has more elements of an oral history or filmed documentary […]

A slightly happier ending to this story of fatal foes than Romeo and Juliet

Fated Blades by Ilona Andrews

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4.5 stars This was an ARC from Netgalley. My views and opinions are my own. On the alien planet of Rada, most of the powerful families have genetic abilities in some way or another, but the ones born with lethal combat abilities are the fiercest of rivals, and none more so than the Adlers and the Baenas. They are constantly vying to be the most dominant, and now both families are close to discovering the secrets behind their genetic abilities. Matias Baena, head of his […]

“It’s like the foreign legion for nerds” I said, and laughed.

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

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The Kaiju Preservation Society is very definitely a John Scalzi book. In his Afterword, which is worth reading, he describes it as a pop song. It came to him almost fully formed after he finally abandoned a book he describes as “a brooding symphony.” It’s frothy, entertaining and goes down smoothly while pointing out significant cultural issues. The good guys win and the bad guy satisfyingly gets what’s coming to him. I really loved that Scalzi starts this book firmly in our world, in our […]



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