Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Would you go undercover and infiltrate a futuristic mob to save your sibling? I’d have to think really hard…

False Hearts by Laura Lam

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How’s this for a synopsis: a pair of conjoined twins escape the cult they’ve been raised in, are surgically separated and given new hearts, and learn to live in near-future San Francisco, until one of them is arrested for murder and the other has to go undercover as her sister to infiltrate the mob that’s trying to mine people’s dreams and prove her innocence. Whew! It’s a fun ride. Taema and Tila lived on an island in a cult called the Hearth, run by a […]

Getting Steamy in San Francisco: #CannonBookClub2022!

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

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Fog rolling in off the Pacific! Illicit kisses in smoky clubs! Steamed buns filled with jammy pork and spices! What can I say about Last Night at the Telegraph Club that Malinda Lo didn’t already say with total confidence and care when she wrote the book? She felt as if speaking would ruin everything-then they’d have to put a name to this feeling between them, this rapidly growing heat and longing that made the sliver of air between their bodies charged with electricity. She could swear […]

Be Sure To Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair

Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway by Sara Gran

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Unlike Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, I wasn’t able to down this one quickly like I thought I would. I had to sit with certain parts of it. It’s more personal and raw than the first one…and just as good, if not better. It’s tough to describe Gran’s writing style. It’s this mix of absurdism, postmodernism and hardboiled. Usually, people who write that way are trying way too hard. For Gran, it’s effortless. And it makes every dialogue exchange an adventure. Sometimes, I […]

Would you like a do-over of college?

Haunted Heroine by Sarah Kuhn

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Spoiler warning! This is the fourth novel in the series Heroine Complex and this review may contain spoilers for earlier books in the series. I suspect it will also be a lot more satisfying for someone who’s read the preceding three books. Begin with Heroine Complex.    Official book description: Everything in Evie Tanaka’s life is finally perfect. As a badass superheroine, she defends San Francisco from demon invasion on the regular. Her relationships with superhero partner Aveda Jupiter, little sister Bea, and hot, half-demon husband Nate have […]

Fae Murder Mystery in San Francisco

Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire

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Rosemary and Rue is the first book in the October Daye series by Seanan McGuire. I’ve been meaning to read this forever. I’m a big fan of detective mysteries and urban fantasy. I’m very happy to review it for the And So It Begins CBR11 bingo square. October Daye, Toby for short, is a changeling and a knight errant to the Duke of Shadowed Hills. In this universe, the Fae are hidden to humans and live amongst them in secret. Toby’s mother is a powerful […]

Revisiting the Early Novels of a Long Running Series

An Artificial Night by Seanan McGuire

Late Eclipses by Seanan McGuire

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While the October Daye series didn’t start clicking for me until the third book, it has since become one of my favorite urban fantasy series.  I love the expansive world building and even thirteen books in, the series keeps growing without conflicting with itself.  I don’t know if McGuire always had this extended world in her head but didn’t know how much time she would have to explore it or if she is going novel to novel on the fly, but it has been such […]



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