Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Strong Succession vibes in Maclean’s new contemporary

These Summer Storms by Sarah Maclean

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4.5 stars CBR17 Book Bingo: Family Thanks to Random House and Netgalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own. Alice Storm hasn’t had any contact with her family for five years, since she went public with some unsavoury company secrets and her father disowned her. Now her larger-than-life father, Franklin Storm, is dead, and she has to return to the family’s private island off Rhode Island to pay her respects. She isn’t planning on staying past the funeral, but it seems even in death, […]

Breuckelen

Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson

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I rarely read the afterward in an author’s book. Usually it’s because I’m too excited to get started on the next book to really care. But I enjoyed Pineapple Street so much, I raced to the afterward because I wanted to see what inspired her to write the book. Reading it amused me because I think the book she produced was one her brain wrote as opposed to the one her heart thought she was writing. And that’s perfectly fine. According to Jackson, she was inspired by […]

“A kiss might be blameless, so long as it was the other person doing the leaning. Was it your fault, really, if someone else kissed you?”

The Portrait of a Mirror by A. Natasha Joukovsky

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What if A.S. Byatt’s Possession popped up again in the internet age? The Portrait of a Mirror answers that question with a heaping helping of Greek mythology to boot. Diana, Wes, Dale, and Vivien are spoiled obsessives staring at themselves into eternity. They are slimy people, but you know what? I don’t care! I want them to be happy in their clandestine adventures, and I want them to be miserable in their public falling outs! Wes and Diana are married. Their relationship is a constant sparring match that […]

Is It Bad If You Figure Out The Mystery?

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

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For a large portion of These Pandemic Times, I’ve been in a phase where all I can read are mystery stories and Maeve Binchy. This state of mind is reminiscent of when I was pregnant with my first child and read only Agatha Christie and the occasional Western. There was already a lot going on for my brain to deal with, and I needed something with pretty clear good guys and bad guys. I needed a fun puzzle that wasn’t going to stress me out, […]

Rich People Problems – Neat wrap-up for the trilogy

Rich People Problems by Kevin Kwan

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The end of the “Crazy Rich Asians” trilogy is a mostly satisfying romp, with more high drama and preposterous situations that we have come to love from Kwan. The characters are consistent from the previous books: Rachel is sweet and wooden, Eleanor is domineering and awful, Nick is charming and charming, Astrid is otherworldly, Eddie is a screeching gasbag. And so forth. Su Yi is on her deathbed and in this final act, we find out what happens to her estate, and all of the […]

Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems

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Set about two years after China Rich Girlfriend, Rich People Problems starts with an event to bring the whole family together – Su Yi, the matriarch of the Young family, has a heart attack and is not expected to live long, prompting Nick to finally return home in an attempt to reconcile with his beloved grandmother. The family shenanigans are as fun and gossip filled as the rest of the books in the series, and Eddie, the clueless Hong Kong cousin, adds a lot of […]



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