Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Being a superhero can cause super problems in a relationship

Super Adjacent by Crystal Cestari

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While this is a fun YA book about superheroes and the people who date them, it also brings up some relevant points about obsessions with celebrities. Switch out the superheroes with movie stars or singers and some of the issues that come up in this book can easily be seen in today’s society.   Claire is a fangirl, no doubt about it.  (She has good reason to be, up to a certain point.)  She follows the Chicago branch of the Warrior Nation superhero team obsessively […]

A spectacular debut YA novel

Color Me In by Natasha Diaz

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I really loved Color Me In, it was outstanding. It is hard for me to believe this is Natasha Diaz’s debut novel. Color Me In tells the story of Nevaeh Levitz, a black Jewish girl whose parents separate and who moves in with her mother’s family in Harlem. I found this book from a tweet of a friend who retweeted the author. While I can’t comment on perspective of someone who is coming to terms with their racial identity, I can certainly comment from the […]

This was fine, but the satire didn’t really resonate for me.

The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

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Everybody raves about Patrick Ness, but this is my first experience with his books. He seems like a talented writer. His prose was well-executed. He knows his way around story and character arcs. And he seems very imaginative and inventive. I even read this book pretty fast, and while reading, I wasn’t ever wishing I was reading something else. But . . . I just didn’t click with it. And the parts I did click with were sort of undercut by the ending. It was […]

“You know those people where it’s like, you know they could kill you, but it would be a privilege to die by their hand?” #CBRBingo – Friendship

Foolish Hearts by Emma Mills

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This was adorable. I don’t read much contemporary YA, but if they were all as cute and funny as this was, I would read a lot more of it. I picked this book up on a whim in a used bookstore last summer. I remembered that several of my friends had given it glowing reviews, so despite my sometime-aversion to the genre, I bought it. A well-spent $9, for sure. (And my copy, an Owl Crate version somebody sold for credit, is signed by the […]

Murder Investigation as a Capstone Project

A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

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I always enjoy a good YA novel.  In recent years, I have read some really fun Young Adult mysteries.  A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson fits this genre.  I first saw this title advertised  in February as a Barnes and Noble YA book club selection.  I tried to get it from my library back then, but it only became available when my library recently reopened. Pipa decides to do her high school capstone project about the murder five years earlier of high […]

2 Perspectives, 1 Great Story

I’m Not Dying With You Tonight by Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal

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Cbr12bingo Friendship I’m Not Dying With You Tonight is a perfect book for the times we live in and would make a great pick for a book club, a community read, middle school and high school students, and their parents. Lena and Campbell are seniors at an Atlanta high school, and other than that they have little in common. They would probably have never had more than cursory interaction with one another if not for the fight and ensuing riot that started at a football […]



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