Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Chilling.

Snow by John Banville

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It’s impossible for me to review this novel without providing SPOILERS, so read at your own peril.  Rural Ireland, 1957. Detective St. John Strafford (with an R) has been summoned to a country estate in the south-east of Ireland, where a Catholic priest has been found dead in the house of a Protestant land owner. The real kicker: the priest has been castrated. It’s December and the countryside is cloaked in a thick blanket of snow that chokes out sound and hides evidence. Under the […]

“Dear Sir, May I humbly suggest being less of an idiot and doing whatever it takes…”

The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes by Cat Sebastian

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This review contains spoilers for The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes & The Queer Principles of Kit Webb (indirectly): Perfect Crimes releases June 7th, so if all you want is a reminder/nudge to go buy the book, consider this your full-steam ahead, yes-please-buy-this-book-immediately, recommendation.  Go read it, & then come back here to talk with me about it, please!  This review is 90% amazing quotes, and – as such – will give away/hint at major plot points. If you want your journey to the HEA unspoiled, stop now.  […]

Celia Sucks: A Rant About Evelyn Hugo

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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Once a year it’s my turn to pick a book for my long-running book club. And every year, I choose a book about lesbians. Last time, it was The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters. One of my book club friends’ grandma decided to read it also and was mildly scandalized by the fairly graphic sex scenes. This year I chose The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, mostly because lesbian Twitter called it dramatic adjectives like “gutting.” My guts stayed firmly in place, but I did […]

A love story set in the Arctic surrounded by terrible men ruining things

The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

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It is 1617 and nearly all the men of the northeasternmost city of Vardo, Norway have been tragically killed by a storm while fishing out at sea. That leaves the women and children of Vardo to fend for themselves. Maren is among those women. Maren must find a way to balance the headstrong Kirsten who feels that no tradition is too sacred to be broken in service of herself, the pious Toril who passes judgment on anyone who does not fall in line with her […]

One of my least favorite characters gets her own story; not a lot is accomplished.

Avatar the Last Airbender: Smoke and Shadow by Bryan Konietzko, Michael Dante DiMartino, Gene Luen Yang, Gurihiru

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Mai’s father, Ukano, is visited by dark spirits in the middle of the night with threats and warnings that Zuko is not the Fire Lord that the Fire Nation needs. Ukano, who already had formed a secret society to put Ozai back on the throne, uses this premonition as fuel for his cause: Zuko must be removed because he is weak. As evidence of this, the spirits that visit Ukano are kidnapping children from the village and the Fire Lord is powerless to stop. Fire […]

Nothing happened and nothing changed

Codex by Lev Grossman

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Edward is a young, highly successful New York City investment banker about to embark on a new phase of his career in London. While on a two week vacation to get all of his affairs in order before moving to the other side of the pond, he is hired by one of his clients, a Duke and Duchess from England, for a little side work: organizing a private library and cataloging the books while keeping an eye out for one particular book that has been […]



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