Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Summer is perfect for hot romance short stories

Burning Up by Nalini Singh, Angela Knight, Mejean Brooks, Virginia Kantra

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When reading a long series, it’s nice to take a break with a genre collection under an interesting theme. Burning Up brings together four authors who know how to bring the heat to a supernatural romance! As I heard only great things about Nalini Singh, I decided to bring this on my adult spring break trip to Hawaii. I procrastinated on my review and realized this is perfect for my Summer Reads bingo square. I highly recommend powering through a sexy anthology on the plane. […]

“The colonizer writes the history, winning twice: A theft of land. A theft of witness.”

Before the Devil Breaks You by Libba Bray

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In this third installment of Bray’s fantastic Diviners series, Libba Bray finally pulls together many moving pieces and lays down the major themes of the series with gusto. If I could sum it up in one phrase, I’d call this book “Ghosts are scary, but not as scary as evangelism” Or “Ghosts are scary, but it’s your fault.” The Diviners are a diverse group of supernaturally talented young people in 1920s NYC (who aren’t officially called “The Diviners” but simply “diviners” at this point).  In […]

Still has exciting steampunk aerial combat but doesn’t recapture the joy of the first book

Arabella the Traitor of Mars: The Adventures of Arabella Ashby by David D. Levine

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“The Adventures of Arabella Ashby” series starts off with a bang in Arabella of Mars. The second book, Arabella and the Battle of Venus, was not as ‘romantic and dashing’ as the first.  The third, Arabella the Traitor of Mars, is a good conclusion to Arabella’s story but it doesn’t have the spark of the first book. I mentally groaned when the book started with Arabella and Captain Singh on Earth but then Arabella, once again, needs to race to the other side of the solar system, in as […]

“I want a man who stays out of my way.”

Waistcoats & Weaponry (Finishing School, #3) by Gail Carriger

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All right, I liked this one quite a bit. I’m invested in the series now. But I’m still only giving this 3.5 stars, rounded up, because it shouldn’t take you two books to be emotionally invested. I should have been in like Flynn after book one. Anyway, I finished this book in a frenzy and immediately wanted the next one (which I’m not getting to until next month, sadface), so that’s a great sign. Sophronia and Co. are halfway through their second year at Madame Geraldine’s Finishing […]

A novel of peculiar incidents and unruly dissidents.

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Book three of  Carriger’s Custard Protocol series does not disappoint. I know that this author is much discussed in the CBRosphere, so no doubt some of you are already reading this or have it waiting in the wings. For those of you who have not discovered her books yet,  immediately begin with these.  I read  my first of her books during CBR3 and described them as “If Jane Austen lived in Victorian England and was getting properly shagged on a regular basis, this is what she […]

An Engineer is no match for a Historian with his dander up!

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This is a book that has lurked on the edges of my “I should add this to my TBR pile” mental list but somehow never made it on. I saw the trailer for the upcoming film version of it and knew it was something that my kid and I would both like, so I took the plunge. In terms of world building, it’s a unique one in the vast landscape of dystopian, steampunk, young adult fare. Hundreds of years in the future, we have somehow ruined […]



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