Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The bloom has come off the Rose

You Deserve Each Other by Sarah Hogle

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Naomi Westfield is engaged to be married to the handsome, thoughtful Nicholas Rose. They are a saccharine pair, complete with their own wedding hashtag (#TrueLovesKissFromARose) and schmoopy social media posts. Naomi has a dark secret, though: she despises Nick and desperately wants out. But she can’t really afford to initiate the break-up, so she has to get Nick to want to leave her. And away we go. I look at Nicholas and realize I am actually marrying this man. Forty percent because I love him […]

Robo Boogey

Happiness for Humans by P.Z. Reizin

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Jen is a struggling writer (aren’t we all). She doesn’t have much direction in life (who does). To make things even worse, her smarmy lawyer boyfriend has not only decided that he doesn’t want to have kids with Jen, but that he doesn’t even want to be with Jen. She takes a writing assignment about a tech company, and later comes on full-time for the company for a year in order to become a conversation partner with an AI named Aiden (get it). The idea is […]

I am named after my mother’s unhappiness.

Evvie Drakes Starts Over by Linda Holmes

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CBR11 BINGO: PAJIBA BINGO! (Remix Corner to Cannonballer Says Corner) I think it’s often easy to overlook books that, on the surface, seem like easy reads or the reading equivalent of a rom-com movie. Books that get characterized as “beach reads” or “kissing books” are easily pigeonholed as entertaining romances devoid of any gravitas. I know there is a strong contingent of Cannonballers who are devout romance readers, so I’m probably preaching to the choir here. You can’t always judge a book by it’s cover, right? Not that […]

What’s Not to Love?

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

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My romantic expectations hover somewhere between The English Patient and Lust, Caution. (Love is brief and destroys lives. THE END.) Reading The Rosie Project, I found myself loving the dispassionate narrator in spite of myself. Don is bright, witty, and somewhere on the spectrum. Though he has no use for love—he’s busy with his successful career and finds satisfaction in his careful routine—he decides a wife could be a helpful addition to his overall situation. Imagine Mr. Spock going on OKCupid. The author has said […]

Romantic Comedies are my favorite genre, and these ones are good

Rule Breaker by Lily Morton

Deal Maker by Lily Morton

Risk Taker by Lily Morton

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A couple of weeks ago I discovered a new contemporary LGBTQ romance writer, Roan Parrish, whose work I really enjoyed. Finding a new author is always exciting for me, as I have a tendency to read everything by the authors I like. I’ve been working my way through Roan Parrish’s work, but her books tend towards the heavy and serious, and I found myself looking for something light and romantic…enter this series. Lily Morton’s Mixed Messages series consists of three books: the first book is […]

“Alexa looked down into her coffee again, gazing into the dark brown liquid like it was Dumbledore’s Pensieve”

The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory

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The Wedding Date, by Jasmine Guillory, is a delightful romcom that doesn’t shy away from some of the tough work involved in interracial relationships. Alexa calls Drew on his privilege many times in the book, and Drew demonstrates that he’s learning. These issues come up throughout the book, but not in a preachy way – in a way that shows a relationship growing and trust developing. Briefly, Alexa and Drew ‘meet cute’ in an elevator, which sets the stage for a fake relationship. Their chemistry […]



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