Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I Can Always Rely on Stashed Romance Novels

The Write Escape by Charish Reid

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I read my first Charish Reid novel back in 2020 right before COVID shut everything down for a while. Hearts on Hold has been a book I think of often. In 2021 I read (Trust) Falling for You, but somehow managed to skip Reid in my 2022 reading excursions. Since the books I brought with me for holiday travel were a bit hit and miss (Make You Mine This Christmas and The Holiday Trap were good, the other two books I had with me probably […]

“The fifth glass is unarguably clean. Especially because Haf has been pretending to scrub at a stain that isn’t there, like a horny Lady Macbeth wanting to prolong the moment.”

Make You Mine This Christmas by Lizzie Huxley-Jones

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I love the fake dating trope, so I was pleased as punch that November’s Illumicrate Afterlight book was Make You Mine This Christmas, even more so when forced proximity and all the bisexual chaos enter the equation. The story focuses on Haf who has been having a terrible year and lets her roommate convince her to join them at crashing a Christmas party they may or may not have been invited to. It’s at that party that Haf meets Christopher and following feeling badly for […]

A Wintery Asexual Romance

Ace of Hearts by Lucy Mason

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Even before Read Harder had a task for reading a book with an asexual or aromantic character, I had been on the lookout for a Romance featuring them. It was a niche within the larger Romance genre that I wanted to explore. With that in mind I had added Lucy Mason’s Ace of Hearts to my to-read list in October of last year. And then I waited, patiently (or not so patiently) for a publication date to be announced. Fast forward to this fall, and […]

“People bury the parts of history they don’t like, pave it over like African cemeteries beneath Manhattan skyscrapers.”

When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole

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Thrillers aren’t usually my genre. Is that why When No One Is Watching is good but not great for me? Possibly. But we read out of our comfort zones on purpose so that maybe the next one is better, or that we’re more ready for it. This is another book that hopped to the front of the to read line based on this year’s Read Harder Challenge which has a task specifically for reading a political thriller by a marginalized author and this fits the […]

Opposites Attract Enemies to Friends to Lovers

The Stand-up Groomsman by Jackie Lau

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I know a Jackie Lau romance is going to make my heart happy. In some ways The Stand-up Groomsman is a departure from the types of Lau books I’ve enjoyed in the past. In this follow up to last year’s Donut Fall in Love Lau takes a more serious tone and unpacks some bigger emotional truths, in this case how we handle expectations and how it interacts with larger family dynamics. But in most ways, this is almost exactly the type of book I’ve come […]

“This – not any particular piece of Vietnamese culture – is my inheritance: the inexplicable need and extraordinary ability to run when the shit hits the fan. My refugee reflex.”

The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui

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On 2022’s Read Harder Challenge Task 6 is to read a non-fiction YA comic. Each year when the Read Harder tasks are unveiled, I go through my over 600 book deep to read list on Goodreads looking for books to fulfill each task. I knew this one would be difficult, there just isn’t much in the way of non-fiction graphic works on my TBR, which is an area I could do to grow in (thus, doing this reading challenge each year since 2015). I was […]



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