Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Being a teenager is hard enough without the threat of total annihilation looming on the horizon.

I Hope You Get This Message by Farah Naz Rishi

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Jesse, Cate, and Adeem are all just trying to survive- even before they catch wind of an alien planet’s message to earth: you will all be destroyed in seven days. Our main trio holds a treasure trove of teen torments between them: absent parents, the desire to be loved, the inability to accept care, the need to be anywhere other than where they are. Everyone is attempting to find someone who does not necessarily want to be found, and I was worried that we’d being […]

Give Me All the Dystopian Mean Girls Drama

The Grace Year by Kim Liggett

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This was a creepy YA thriller that I do not recommend picking up late at night. You will stay up way past your bedtime reading this novel of messed up teenage girls forced into a life or death scenario. Learn from me, as I spent way too many nights reading past midnight. The Grace Year is set in a society somewhat like a fundamentalist cult in the 1800s. Tierney is our main character, a middle child in a large family who is about to experience […]

“The tricky thing about giving opinions is that sometimes they cost you more than you wanted to spend.”

The Downstairs Girl by Stacey Lee

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Jo Kuan and her father figure Old Jin have gotten by pretty well, considering they are Chinese Americans in the deep South of 1890.  Old Jin works as a horse caretaker for a local wealthy family, and Jo has a talent for millinery, so she is hopeful for an apprenticeship at the shop she works.  However, she is abruptly fired one day due to her supposed overly-frank attitude with customers (“You make the customers uncomfortable”).  Old Jin is able to get her a position as […]

Lovely YA book about coming out as nonbinary.

I Wish You All the Best by Mason Deaver

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This was so good! I knew it would be. Too many of my GR friends whose opinions on books I usually align with loved it. I definitely wasn’t expecting to become so angry while reading the first several chapters that I could literally feel in my face that my blood pressure was rising, and the corners of my vision went sort of black. This poor child. All the poor children. What the fuck, parents, what the actual fuck is wrong with you. Oh my god, […]

Fierce heroine, creative aliens, and space adventure with bonus review from Ysakitty!

Starsight by Brandon Sanderson

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When I finished reading Skyward,I did not intend on getting the sequel right away, as there were already books in the house waiting to be read.  However, once I was done with the book my 6th grader tore through it and then my husband followed quickly thereafter.  So the next time I went to the bookstore, the sequel, Starsight, came home with me.  (Note: this was written before lock down happened in California)  It is an excellent follow up to Skyward but one thing annoyed me, Starsight is […]

“Because, my girl you are sacred, valuable, indispensable, and irreplaceable”

#NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native American Women by Lisa Charleyboy, Mary Beth Leatherdale (editors)

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I keep doing reading challenges for a couple reasons, but one of them is that it tends to point out areas that my reading habits need to expand. This year the Read Harder Challenge includes tasks for both YA Non-fiction and to read a book in any genre by a Native, First Nations, or Indigenous author. I’ve already read one YA Non-fiction this year, but while I was hunting up titles I came across #NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native American Women edited by Lisa Charleyboy and […]



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