Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Missing you is profoundly inconvenient, I’ll have you know. I have things to do and places to be, and all the while I’ll feel like I’ve mislaid a piece of my soul and I won’t get it back until I see you again. That can’t be normal.”

The Ruin of a Rake by Cat Sebastian

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I should have read this one much closer to the previous two in the series, The Soldier’s Scoundrel and The Lawrence Brown Affair because so many of our previous characters reappear here and are woven into the plot. As a reader you can tell that Sebastian was getting more comfortable in her writing, overall, this book is stronger than the previous two, even if Sebastian shortchanges the plot a smidge in the final third. I continue to really like how Cat Sebastian builds her stories: […]

“Because, my girl you are sacred, valuable, indispensable, and irreplaceable”

#NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native American Women by Lisa Charleyboy, Mary Beth Leatherdale (editors)

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I keep doing reading challenges for a couple reasons, but one of them is that it tends to point out areas that my reading habits need to expand. This year the Read Harder Challenge includes tasks for both YA Non-fiction and to read a book in any genre by a Native, First Nations, or Indigenous author. I’ve already read one YA Non-fiction this year, but while I was hunting up titles I came across #NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native American Women edited by Lisa Charleyboy and […]

“It amazed me how quickly a lie loses its power in the face of truth.”

In Order to Live: a North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom by Yeonmi Park, Maryanne Vollers

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First, I feel a little bad rating In Order to Live: a North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom three stars. Park’s life story to the point of her writing this book, just 21 years, is full of the sort of deprivations, suffering, drive to survive, and eventually hope that make you want to love the work. Yeonmi Park’s life deserves notice and her book deserves to be read. Unfortunately for me, it felt more like homework than a captivating read. Second, there are some books […]

Live a Bold Life

Ten Days a Madwoman: The Daring Life and Turbulent Times of the Original “Girl” Reporter, Nellie Bly by Deborah Noyes

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  We’ve reached the first book of the year that I read expressly because it fit a Read Harder Challenge. Task number one is to read a YA non-fiction. I did not have any juvenile non-fiction on my 650 books deep to read list, so I had to go looking. Nellie Bly had recently come up at work and I realized I knew very little about the famous reporter beyond her time in Blackwell or her around the world trip so onto my library request […]

Bring On More Sexy Librarian Male Leads, I’m Here For It!

Hearts on Hold by Charish Reid

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In my many years of reading and reviewing I have paid little to no attention to Publishers. I pre-ordered Charish Reid’s newest book Hearts on Hold based on emmalita’s review of the ARC. I knew nothing else about the book, its author, or the publishing house. When I opened my nook and found that this was a Carina Press book, home of Cannonball favorite Lucy Parker, I was downright delighted. Hearts on Hold is the story of Dr. Victoria Reese, English professor at Pembroke University […]

All Manner of Things Will Be Well

Glass Houses (Inspector Gamache #13) by Louise Penny

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There is, at least for me, somewhat of a struggle on deciding how to review a book deep into a series. Glass Houses is Louise Penny’s thirteenth Inspector Gamache book, and as she publishes a new one each year the sixteenth in the series will publish in September. There is so much backstory that feeds each new novel that I can’t rightly tell you to read this one if you haven’t read its predecessors, but I can emphatically tell you that if you like murder […]



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