Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A fantasy zoo that is a love letter to the importance of conservation

The Phoenix Keeper by S. A. MacLean

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First and very importantly, Thank You CoffeeShopReader!  I thoroughly enjoyed The Phoenix Keeper.  It was a perfect book to close out a year that required lighter reading due to life challenges.  Also there was an added layer of fun as the zoo and location were clearly inspired by San Diego and our world famous zoo. As phoenix keeper at the magical San Tamculo Zoo, Aila is close to achieving a lifelong dream.  Overseeing a breeding pair of critically endangered Silimalo phoenixes and helping to bring them […]

Husband shopping isn’t as fun as it sounds

The Husbands by Holly Gramzaio

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I love “what if” books, where you have a premise that the author just goes with, no matter how out there it is. And the question of how or why really isn’t the point. I think Jose Saramago is great at what ifs, but reading his books requires a degree of patience and concentration that Gramazio doesn’t demand. So, what if…a husband emerged from your attic? Forget the fact that you’re not even married, or that you have an apparently magic attic. What would you […]

Powerful story of climate change

Dust by Alison Stine

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There was so much of this I loved, but also this was a book that felt really slow through most of the middle. Thea is partially deaf and after her family’s home in Ohio flooded, her dad brought them to Bloodless Valley in Colorado in order to live a simple life and return to basic farming lifestyle. But there is nothing simple about living in the Valley. There’s been a drought for a long time and corporate farms keep buying the water, making it harder […]

Intriguing, but Confusing

The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton

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The story: A small group of villagers on an island are the last survivors on Earth after a deadly fog wiped out most of humanity. The residents of the village include regular villagers as well as three “elders,” who are scientists that work to keep the fog at bay thanks to a complex security system and lead the island. One morning the villagers awake to discover that one of the scientists has been murdered, and this murder has triggered a change in the security system. […]

Someone has a secret that’s pretty easy to guess and who really cares anyways

Unordinary vol 1 by uru-chan

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Bingo 21: Liberate John and Seraphina both want to be free (liberated) from social strictures and expectations somehow. But the rules of the world they live in are not developed. But is you sort of imagine a My Hero Academia world where more people are un-powered than not, it makes a little more sense. They both seem to think that you should judge folks for who they are. Not whether or how much power they have. Sound familiar? Unordinary is highly cliché; this is the […]

Death Becomes Him

Under the Whispering Door by T. J. Klune

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Bingo 13: Pride Under the Whispering Door is most definitely not a book to read for plot, as it’s largely thematically and character driven, and it’s also not one you want to really speed through as it’s got a lot of lyrical segments. Both of these are strengths, but also reasons why you need to be in the right mood to really enjoy this, and I have to admit, I wasn’t always. The two main threads, adjusting to being dead and coming to terms with […]



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