Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A predictable “The story ended in friendship without any hurt feelings.” but to be continued…

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! Vol. 4 by Satoru Yamaguchi, Nami Hidaka

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I have no idea why this series is rated “Teen”; ok, there’s a little violence (mostly suggested) but still, especially given how it all works out, My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! Vol. 4 isn’t much less dark than The Babysitter’s Club, although this one is definitely less realistic. This is definitely one of those series you can turn to when you want something light; the general premise is that after dying is a car accident while in high school, […]

The only way to learn is to live.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

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The barrage of fake perfection on social media these days can easily toss a big old regret salad and serve it up. The rabbit hole of “friends,” spotless kitchens, fancy sounding job titles and instagram-able artisanal birthday parties for toddlers is bottomless. I think everyone wonders, from time to time, how their life would have turned out if they had taken a different fork in the road. Would that job, relationship, or overseas trip fundamentally change everything? Nora Sneed is done with living. Thinking, at […]

The ones that I couldn’t finish (NOT my double Cannonball!)

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Trelegemeproblemet (The Three-Body Problem) by Liu Cixin

Of Curses and Kisses by Sandhya Menon

American Demon by Kim Harrison

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Dear readers, I’m not going to lie, I’m racing against the clock to get all of my reviews finished in time for the CBR12 deadline (12 noon EST – or 6 pm Oslo time). I also need to finish 25% of the final novel I’m reviewing, co-parent my autocratic, demanding, and rather clingy almost-three-year-old, plan and prep a three-course New Year’s meal, and possibly do some last-minute shopping. No pressure, right? So when fellow Cannonballer Pixifer posted a review with all of her DNF’s for the year, […]

Ring Shout

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

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Ring Shout takes place in Georgia in 1922. Segregation, Jim Crow laws, and the KKK are part of everyday life. It’s up to Maryse and her friends Sadie, a sharpshooter, and Chef, a former soldier and explosives expert, to protect the community from evil. Klu Kluxxers look like regular Klansmen on the outside, but to those with the sight, they are monsters. Maryse wields a sword, but a special sword given to her by three godlike entities that contains the energy of generations of enslaved […]

Did not expect to love a book about zombies

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

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4.5 stars Official book description: The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least […]

Unsustainable human society hammered into the meridian of an alien planet

The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders

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January is a tide-locked planet, one side permanently cold dark night, one blinding searing day, with human colonists clinging to precarious life on the narrow boundary.  Outside of the human cities the monsters will kill you if the planet doesn’t get you first. Xiosphant is a socially rigid city state, forcing the endless twilight into an intricate regime of well-ordered citizens.  “Everyone in Xiosphant was weirdly polite, just so long as you pretended all their made-up stuff was real.” Sophie is a student from the […]



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