Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Not everyone in our acquaintance needs to be murdered, Veronica. In fact, some people find it preferable to make friends with normal folk.”

A Grave Robbery by Deanna Raybourn

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This is book 9 in an ongoing series, and as such, not the best place to start. Start with A Curious Beginning. Official plot summary (because it’s been too long since I read the book): Lord Rosemorran has purchased a wax figure of a beautiful reclining woman and asks Stoker to incorporate a clockwork mechanism to give the Rosemorran Collection its own Sleeping Beauty in the style of Madame Tussaud’s. But when Stoker goes to cut the mannequin open to insert the mechanism, he makes […]

MysterFantsyMance

The Fox Wife: A Novel by Yangsze Choo

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Cbr16bingo Smash mystery/fantasy/romance = MysterFantsyMance The Fox Wife is a beautiful novel that combines mystery, fantasy and romance, and even some history. Set in China and Japan in the early 20th century, its main characters deal with the pangs of first love, lost love, obsessive love, and the loss of children against a backdrop of revolution and a world in the grip of major change. Author Yangsze Choo writes at the end of this story about her personal interest in the fox legends of China […]

It took eleven volumes but there’s some actual character development. Now if only it went somewhere.

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! v.11 by Satoru Yamaguchi, Nami Hidaka

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My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom is largely cozy isekai fantasy. Protagonist, a geeky gamer high schooler, dies/wakes up in the body of the antagonist of her favorite romance video game, and she has to avoid the bad outcomes for herself. Which she does mostly by being nice to everyone, and also clueless about the romance part. As in, noticing who is actually in love with whom. This almost active refusal to see what’s in front of her get annoying, […]

Also, it’s a crime that no one in the book or in the acknowledgements noted that this is also the plot of High Fidelity.

Exes & O's by Amy Lea

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30 Books in 30 Days, Vol. 4 Book 3/30 Well, I slept on this one overnight and I’m glad I did. Sometimes the things that stay with you about a book are the bothersome bits, the annoyances, making the reading experience sour in your memory, and sometimes what floats to the top are the moments of cute banter and cuddling, and just overall positive feelings. The latter is the case here, so while I thought this was a bit wobbly in parts and found the […]

It’s a nope from me, dawg.

Can't Spell Treason Without Tea (Tomes & Tea, #1) by Rebecca Thorne

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I’m so sad rn, but this was so dull. Cozy fantasy should still have emotional stakes. I’m actually writing this review straightly upon finishing because I just want to be done with it (barring my May YouTube wrap-up, but talking is easier than writing). Like many, I have been really, really into this cozy fantasy thing since Legends and Lattes first did its thing, and unfortunately, I think this author learned the wrong lessons from that book, which she tells us in the afterword was a huge […]

My new favorite Emily Henry book.

Funny Story by Emily Henry

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“What do we love?” “Your fake relationship,” Ashleigh says. “Well, I don’t,” I say. “Now there’s no good way to get out of it. I mean, when we ‘break up,’ Peter will get to feel smug and superior about that. “That’s no problem,” Miles says, pouring a taste of white wine for each of us. “All we have to do is get married, and then stay together until they split up. And if they have kids, just have one more than them. If they get a dog, we get a […]



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