Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Aren’t you that notorious bad girl April French?”

For the Love of April French by Penny Aimes

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We meet April and Dennis just before they meet each other. The first couple of chapters of For the Love of April French capture perfectly that feeling of endless possibility when you meet a potential new romantic partner – all the wonder of meeting someone you want to know better and all the fear that they will be awful, or reject you when they get to know you. It’s an expansive, joyful, terrifying feeling and Penny Aimes nails it. For the Love of April French […]

“Look. I realize you’re a complex individual. But let’s just say that cute’s definitely in there.”

Uncharted by Adriana Anders

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If there is an animal in a suspense book, I spend the whole book worrying. So first off, the dog is fine. Adriana Anders’ Whiteout was one of my most unexpected favorite reads of last year. The  second book in the Survival Instincts series, Uncharted, continues the overarching story of thwarting Chronos’ quest for genocide and profit. This time, pilot Leo Eddowes and her team are trying to find a scientist hiding in the mountains of Alaska before Chronos finds him. Only a half step […]

I Loved This One Unabashedly and Hope You Do Too

All the Feels by Olivia Dade

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I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All the Feels publishes November 16th, 2021 (originally scheduled for October 26th, 2021.) Last year I read and loved Spoiler Alert and was excited to see that there would be another book in the universe. All the Feels takes everything I loved about the first book and deepens it, makes it stronger and better. All the Feels is very likely going to make it into my top three books of […]

A Swindle, a Romance, and Beautifully Described Music

The Hellion's Waltz by Olivia Waite

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I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  The Hellion’s Waltz is the third book in Olivia Waite’s Feminine Pursuits series (the first book, The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics was published in 2019 and the second Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows last year). As I said in my review of The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows, one of the things I love most in good romance writing is when authors interact with larger themes. These […]

Being Human is a Revolution

The Devil You Know by Kit Rocha

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Kit Rocha’s pragmatic, chaotic optimists have gotten me through the last few years. I’m going to need a bunch of you to buy Deal With the Devil and The Devil You Know, or request that your library buy them, so that I get more of these post-apocalyptic do-gooding murder ladies and sourdough making supersoldier daddies to help me hold onto hope amid the rising tide of authoritarianism, the crumbling wall between church and state, and the increased concentration of wealth into a few hands. I […]

There was a game he could see and another he couldn’t, and he would play them both.

Sword Stone Table: Old Legends, New Voices by Swapna Krishna and Jenn Northington

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My formative King Arthur works were the 1963 Disney movie The Sword in the Stone, and 1975’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail. When I discovered Mary Stewart’s The Crystal Cave, as a preteen, my life as a reader of fantasy and romance was set. I’m a King Arthur enthusiast, but not a purist (except for Antoine Fuqua’s 2004 King Arthur – great cast, beautiful visuals, terrible movie that should never have been marketed as “historically accurate”). Hearing that a work is a retelling of […]



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