Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

This series still not living up to its potential, for me.

One Dark Throne (Three Dark Crowns, #2) by Kendare Blake

by Leave a Comment

I liked this one better than the first one, but there was still some issues lingering from that book, and I have some things to say about Katharine. The plot has officially arrived, and while it felt sort of meandering and messy, at least things were happening. After Beltane, the three Queens of Fennbirn are officially free to murder one another, and the last Queen standing takes the throne. If they haven’t killed each other by the end of the year, they will be locked […]

Thank goodness I didn’t read this debut first

The Near Witch by V.E. Schwab

by Leave a Comment

Bingo review 9: Debut My first encounter with V.E. Schwab was Vicious, her break-out best-seller hit. This led me to A Darker Shade of Magic, and the rest as they say was history. I was intrigued when she announced that her original debut novel The Near Witch was going to be re-published. I didn’t especially enjoy this one; the basic plot and characters are too predictable and it’s written in first person present tense, one of my least favorites. The plot and characters are obviously […]

Snow Dice

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

by Leave a Comment

For my first CBR Bingo read, I choose the ‘UnCannon’ card (a book not written by an old white man) and eagerly started Suzanne Collin’s Hunger Games prequel: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. The book follows the final teenage years of the future President Snow’s life. Remember him? The evil villain who taunted and terrorised young Katniss Everdeen in the original Hunger Games trilogy? This book attempts to answer the question that nobody asked: what was Coriolanus Snow like as a young man? Well, for […]

“There are worse games you could play.”

Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3) by Suzanne Collins

by 2 Comments

I think I’m going to bullet point this one since I am now emotionally exhausted. The rest of the review will be all spoilers. *This is still not a five star book for me, though I am going to bump it up to 4.5 stars. Mainly, I’m still mad about Finnick dying, although the longer time passes, the more I see why she did it. Also, the ending does still seem a little rushed and confused, but then again, it does sort of reflect Katniss’s […]

“This is Afghanistan …. What do you want — a happy ending?”

My Name is Parvana by Deborah Ellis

by 1 Comment

Cbr12bingo Red In this final novel of Deborah Ellis’ The Breadwinner series, we are reunited with Parvana, the young girl who disguised herself as a boy in order to support her family and survive in war torn, Taliban controlled Afghanistan. Several years have passed, Parvana is now a teenager, and Afghanistan is still rocked by war. US troops and bases are nearby, and the Taliban is still terrorizing the people, especially women and girls. Through her YA novels, Ellis shows the perspective of a girl, […]

The story of a child refugee

Mud City by Deborah Ellis

by Leave a Comment

Cbr12bingo Yellow Mud City, the third novel in Ellis’ The Breadwinner series, is the story of Shauzia, the best friend of The Breadwinner’s main character Parvana. In book 1, readers learned that Shauzia, like Parvana, was pretending to be a boy in Taliban-controlled Kabul so that she could work and earn money to support her family at home. Women and girls were denied education and independence and to break the rules was to invite severe punishment, even death. While we don’t learn a lot about […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo