Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Your life is the biggest bargaining chip you have. Before you choose where to spend it, be sure you understand what you’re getting in return.”

In an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire

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This is the 4th book in the Wayward Children series. Last year, I read the first several books in the series. These are all so short, which is nice for the ones you don’t like as well but makes the ones you DO like a bit disappointing as it leaves you wanting more. I read these while on a trip, and intended to continue reading them once I was home but I never did. But, In an Absent Dream just stuck with me. In an Absent […]

A seasonal book that takes a season to read

Seasonal Fears by Seanan McGuire

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Bingo 18: Earth Day   Seanan McGuire knows her folklore, and it shows. In Seasonal Fears, there’s a ton of tropes, but mostly well handled. Basic plot involves the King of Winter and the Queen of Summer dying, and their crowns being up for grabs to those with affiliations for that season. The whole season emphasis thus qualifies for general environment theme, especially since the recently departed King of Winter was cheating the system where he was always in ascendance, which was probably causing climate […]

Somehow I’m Neither Here Nor There

Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire

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The eighth installment of the Wayward Children series was certainly an emotional gut punch for me. Having said that, it might also be one of my favorites in the series. We meet Antoinette or “Antsy” to her loving parents, whom we briefly met in the previous book. We learn about her life before she came to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. Antsy lives a happy life until the sudden death of her father. When her mother remarries shortly after, the man she marries drives […]

Hey, teacher! Leave those kids alone!

Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire

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This seventh installment of Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series does not take us to another world. Instead, we visit the Whitethorn Institute which is the polar opposite of Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. While Eleanor West’s school caters to the many quirks of the children who have returned from other places, The Whitethorn Institute does everything it can to wring out all thoughts of other worlds from its pupils and return them to the “real” world. It emphasizes conformity and rationality above all else. […]

Can you hear the horses? ‘Cause here they come

Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire

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Though we might not like to admit it, many of us threw our lot in with the mean girl against the “weird” girl when we were kids. We chose what seemed like the relative safety of popularity over being considered strange and outcast by our peers. This choice is what sends Regan, our protagonist, through her door and into her journey to the Hooflands in this sixth installment of Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series. This book can be viewed as a standalone as it doesn’t […]

Living Dead Girls

Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire

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Come Tumbling Down is the fifth book in the Wayward Children series and features some of my favorite characters and my favorite magical world so far, The Moors. The Moors look as if they were conceived by the classic MGM horror movie makers but their rules are much more bloody and dangerous. It also sees the return of Jack and Jillian Wolcott, who returned to The Moors at the end of book one, with Jack carrying her dead sister with her through their door. If […]



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