Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Their wives … their mothers … sitting in silence and screaming into darkness”

Lost Among the Living by Simone St James

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While they write in different genres, authors like Fiona Davis, Simone St James and Sarah Beth Durst all hit a similar mark for me – novels that I know will be at minimum solid and dependable, sometimes even more, and all authors still have a bit of a back catalogue left for me. Sometimes you discover an author and immediately devour all their work. With these authors, I’m slowly working my way through but they are my fall back plans when I am not sure […]

“Here it is possible to be instantly and completely happy.”

A Countess Below Stairs by Eva Ibbotson

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CBR14Bingo: Bird — in the sense that the main character is in flight first from the Russian Revolution and then is in a more metaphorical flight through her feelings  This was such a wonderful book, I absolutely loved it! I had read Eva Ibbotson’s children’s books when I was younger, in particular The Secret of Platform 13, but I missed that she also did young adult historical romances, which was a huge oversight on my part. Based off how much I loved this book, I […]

”My name, since you raise the topic, is Arthur Aloysius Kimberley de Brabazon Secretan. What would you do in my place?” “Leave the country … You poor bastard, you never stood a chance.” #CBRBingo – The Roaring 20’s

Slippery Creatures (The Will Darling Adventures, #1) by K.J. Charles

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I loved everything about this. K.J. Charles is honestly spoiling me for other historical romance authors. There’s just something about her style (very detailed, historically accurate, flawed but compelling characters) that gets me right in the pleasure center. She also doesn’t just write in one time period or keep it to straight-up romance. She’s always messing around with spy fiction or mystery or golden age pulp (here and Think of England) or jewelry heists or homages to Georgette Heyer regency fiction. Sometimes many of these […]

Ghosts of War

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This review is for the audiobook version of The Other Side Of Midnight, by Simone St James. This might just be St. James’s best work so far! In 1920s London, psychic Ellie Winter, daughter of the famed Fantastique, is asked to help a mysterious government agent find his sister’s ghost. Gloria Sutter used to be Ellie’s best friend, until her scheming brought ruin to the Fantastique. The New Society was trying to bring legitimacy to psychic phenomenon, but their testing proved Ellie’s mother a fraud, […]

Sisters, Old English Manors, Shell Shock, and Slow-Moving Disappointment

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I probably should have written my review of this book closer to finishing it, because as of right now, my reaction is pretty much just: Meh. The House at Riverton is a post-WWI gothic type novel that chronicles the life of the Hartford family through the eyes of young Grace Bradley, a servant at Riverton Manor from the age of fifteen. Grace is now ninety-nine years old and recounting the story of her time with the Hartfords (particularly with the two sisters, Hannah and Emmeline) […]



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