Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“When I am with you, I feel about as far from anything that has ever hurt me as it is possible to be.”

A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall

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After reading other Alexis Hall books earlier this year, the excellent Boyfriend Material and the quite good Something Fabulous, I became very excited for the promise of A Lady for a Duke. And that excitement was well placed, as I very much enjoyed this outing. While it didn’t quite reach the heights of Boyfriend Material for me, I felt Hall did a much better job with the tone of historical romance than he had in romp in Something Fabulous, even if the pacing bothered me […]

“She unsettled him; he anchored her. Together, they could be more than they were apart.”

Do You Want to Start a Scandal by Tessa Dare

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I had a good time with Do You Want to Start a Scandal, primarily because it does one of my favorite things by putting a good deal of emotional intelligence into a character who may not be expected to have it and then let them deduce the world around them. It is deployed to good use as Charlotte Highwood goes head-to-head with Diplomat turned Spy Piers Brandon, Lord Granville after they are caught together during the Parkhurst ball but are not in fact the couple […]

A sheep in rake’s clothing

My Fake Rake by Eva Leigh

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This is the first book in the Union of the Rakes series, and it starts off with a scene reminiscent of The Breakfast Club.  Five schoolboys are in detention, though for what is not clearly defined.  It’s really just a device to have the boys form a friendship, and provide a backstory to join them together for the series.  This one focuses on Sebastian Holloway – his adult self is scholarly, bespectacled, unfashionably dressed, impoverished and socially awkward.  He loves his research and spending time […]

Romancing Lady Jessica

Someone to Romance by Mary Balogh

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This is book seven (!) in the Westcott series, so I was prepared for a bit of confusion over some of the characters as I hadn’t read the first six.  Still, the overwhelming amount of Westcott family members, in-laws, children and family backstory was almost too much.  I decided to persevere, and focus on the main characters of Jessica and Gabriel, and stress over how Aunt Matilda or Cousin Abigail et al fit into the mix. Jessica, step-sister to the Duke of Netherby, has been […]

“I don’t want to talk about dukes. Bollocks on every last one of them.”

A Delicate Deception (Regency Imposters, #3) by Cat Sebastian

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This was a bit rough, but charming in its roughness. It’s my favorite of Sebastian’s Regency Imposters books. At the beginning of the book especially when the lovers are in the “enemies” phase of “enemies to lovers,” the banter and the narration both are very biting and witty, but in a gentle, non-threatening way for my emotions. Amelia is our heroine, and I will admit it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize she was in both prior books in the series. She has […]

A f/f Regency romance from a major publishing house. It’s a unicorn!

The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics (Feminine Pursuits, #1) by Olivia Waite

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For the most part I enjoyed this, despite a pretty significant misstep near the end. Firstly, I just want to say how happy I was when I heard this was being published. I have been looking for a historical romance f/f novel for a while now. I put out a call to my romance reading friends about six, seven months ago, and there were several novellas we turned up, but most published f/f is contemporary right now, and that’s not really my genre. And the […]



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