Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Charlotte Holmes is accused of murder

A Ruse of Shadows by Sherry Thomas

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3.5 stars Smart Bitches Summer Bingo: the latest or last book in a series CBR16 Bingo: fan fiction This is book 8 in the series, and really not a good place to begin. Start with A Study in Scarlet Women. Charlotte Holmes, more used to solving murder mysteries, now finds herself questioned by the police, the main suspect in the murder of Lord Bancroft Ashburton. Inspector Threadles is concerned for her, but needn’t have worried, Ms Holmes isn’t going to let something as tiresome as […]

Frankenstein but plants and gay!

A Botanical Daughter by Noah Medlock

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I saw a reel on Instagram from the author talking about this book, and I was immediately sold. Frankenstein? Queer? Messy, messy characters? Sign me up! And this absolutely delivers on all fronts. The beginning of A Botanical Daughter is a little slow, but it perfectly sets the scene of Grimfern, an estate inside a greenhouse outside the closest village, and the three main characters – Gregor, botanist and lord of Grimfern; Simon, taxidermist and romantic partner to Gregor; and Jenny, local village girl whose […]

Beautiful, harrowing and oh so sad

In Memoriam by Alice Winn

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CBR16 Bingo: Liberate (our protagonists are fighting in World War I to keep the world safe from the Germans) Official plot summary, because I finished this book in early April: It’s 1914, and talk of war feels far away to Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates, safely ensconced in their idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. At seventeen, they’re too young to enlist, and anyway, Gaunt is fighting his own private battle – an all-consuming infatuation with his best friend, […]

“I do not believe I could ever be frightened of someone who cannot stir out of doors if his cloak has a wrinkle.”

Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett

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4.5 stars Spoiler warning! There will be some spoilers in this review for the first book in the series, so if you’re not caught up, stop what you’re doing and go read Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries immediately. This review will be here when you return. Emily Wilde is back at her university in Cambridge, pleased with the success of her Faerie Encyclopedia. The proposal from her best friend Wendell Bambleby is still something she needs to consider, but after having her suspicions confirmed, that […]

The Shepherd King duology: power through the first book, it’s all worth it for the second

One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig

Two Twisted Crowns by Rachel Gillig

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One Dark Window: 3 stars Two Twisted Crowns: 4 stars Spoiler warning! Some minor spoilers for One Dark Window in this review. 20-year-old Elspeth Spindle (all the noble families have surnames taken from trees) lives in the kingdom of Blunder, most of which is now enveloped in a thick, sinister fog. Most people who venture out into the fog without a talisman (bones, feathers, animal feet, braided horsehair, etc) go mad and run off into the forest, never to be seen again. The only ones who seem […]

Yo Ho! A Pirate’s Life for Me

Daughter of the Pirate King by Tricia Levenseller

Daughter of the Siren Queen by Tricia Levenseller

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Daughter of the Pirate King – 3 stars Daughter of the Siren Queen – 4 stars Alosa is a famous pirate captain in her own right, leading a crew of almost exclusively women. She also happens to be the only daughter of the Pirate King, who rules the seas with cruelty and intimidation tactics. Her father has one piece of a legendary treasure map, which will reveal the location of untold riches to the one who can locate and unite the missing pieces. Alosa needs to get […]



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