Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Large groups of powerful men have little reason to make change.”

Heartbreaker by Sarah Maclean

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CBR14 Bingo: Heart (it’s right there in the title, and this is a romance) Adelaide Frampton was once the unappreciated daughter of one of the East End’s most notorious criminals, which led her to acquire a number of illegal skills that now come in handy as she frequents London’s high society posing as the unassuming and plain spinster cousin of a duchess. She uses her time on the sidelines of ballrooms and society events to observe and acquire information and can also put her top-notch […]

The sunshine and the grumpy one – now with added crime!

The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes by Cat Sebastian

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CBR14 Bingo: Gaslight (Marian was lied to and manipulated by the duke, book also set in the Georgian era) Spoiler warning! I’m going to do my best to review this book without spoiling major plot points from The Queer Principles of Kit Webb or this book, but if you want to remain fully unspoiled, you’d probably want to skip this review until you’ve actually read the book. Which you should (read the book, I mean), it’s absolutely marvellous. Marian Hayes, believed to be the Duchess […]

A wonderful Regency romp where nearly everyone is queer

Something Fabulous by Alexis Hall

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4.5 stars Official book description: Valentine Layton, the Duke of Malvern, has twin problems: literally. It was always his father’s hope that Valentine would marry Miss Arabella Tarleton. But, unfortunately, too many novels at an impressionable age have caused her to grow up…romantic. So romantic that a marriage of convenience will not do and after Valentine’s proposal she flees into the night determined never to set eyes on him again. Arabella’s twin brother, Mr. Bonaventure “Bonny” Tarleton, has also grown up…romantic. And fully expects Valentine […]

A road trip with a difference

Becoming Dinah by Kit de Waal

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Seventeen-year old Dinah has spent almost all her life on a religious commune somewhere in Northumberland (in northern England), being educated at home with the other children. Only recently has she gone to a ‘proper’ school, and her feelings of culture shock and confusion are convincingly drawn. When we first meet her, something awful has happened (which de Waal delays telling us about), and Dinah is taking advantage of her mother’s absence on a Women’s Retreat to reinvent herself as ‘Ishmael’, cutting off her long […]

Find yourself in the rhythm and the ride

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig

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In the late 1960s, a narrator who very closely resembles author Robert M. Pirsig embarks on a summer motorcycle trip with his adolescent son and some friends, traveling from their home in Minneapolis to San Francisco. Twinned with descriptions of their physical journey across the great plains is Pirsig’s descriptions of his philosophical journey, his theory of life as analogized through his relationship with his motorcycle. For the narrator/author, the physical act of motorcycle maintenance, the attention to detail, the willingness to devote time and […]

Two Scottish bozos in a camper van.

Clanlands: Whisky, Warfare, and a Scottish Adventure Like No Other by Sam Heughan & Graham McTavish

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I have not seen the STARZ TV show this book is the account of making, but this book (and the audiobook specifically) was a pretty good time. (STARZ insisted on naming the TV show Men in Kilts, but its original name was Clanlands, as this book makes pretty clear without actually stating it.) If you want something extremely goofy, spotted through with Scottish history, this is your book. The book is told by both Graham and Sam in alternating POV sections as they narrate the […]



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