Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“A romance is a belief in the impossible: that anything ends happily.”

A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid

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This was really good but I can’t give it a full five stars for one reason. More on that reason below. But first! I enjoyed this so much! I said this in a status update while reading, but it was such a relief to have a YA book tackle what this book is trying to tackle* and have it SUCCEED instead of falling down on its face. Ava Reid, like her or not, is really talented. There are of course going to be people that […]

Cat Transformations and Found Family

Spell Bound by FT Lukens

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Rook has a secret – he’s non-magical, yet a powerful sorcerer has taken him on as her apprentice. But when the Magical Consortium comes down on them for breaking the law, he ends up going on the run with Sun, the apprentice of a rival sorcerer. I  read FT Lukens’s So This is Ever After last year, which I gave an A for the romance but found the other aspects of the story less impressive. But I’ll try most things twice, and intrigued by the […]

“He laughs and laughs. My, how he laughs.”

The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle by T.L. Huchu

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Ropa should be on cloud nine, helping organize the Society of Skeptical Enquirers’ biennial conference and hobnobbing with all the bigwigs of Scottish magic. But when she’s left scrambling to investigate a politically charged theft, she begins to wonder if the world of magic is more trouble than it’s worth. This is the third book in the Edinburgh Nights series, which follows teenage ghostalker Ropa as she investigates magical crimes in a politically uneasy Scotland. In this book, we seem to shift from the individual […]

Unique takes on age-old tales for a YA audience

At Midnight by Dahlia Adler

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Dahlia Adler has been pumping out YA anthologies based on familiar lore for a while. At MIDNIGHT, twists on popular fairy tales, is her most recent work. It’s also the first I’ve read, though I have her Poe remix on my shelf, and the Shakespeare remix is definitely going on my wishlist. It is a fantastic homage to favorite fairy tales. Almost all of them bring something new to each tale, but here are my favorites: Adler’s Rumpelstiltskin, which turns the gold-making goblin into a […]

Creepy yet unsatisfying jaunt into a Japanese underworld with games.

Find Him Where You Left Him Dead by Kristen Simmons

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Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It hasn’t affected the contents of my review. I liked this, but there are some pretty significant things keeping me from giving this any higher than three stars. The biggest problem being that several of the twisty details and reveals make no sense, and we get no explanations for them. Some of this I guess I can write off if it turns out this will be a series [note: yes, it will be a series, it […]

“Summer went away, still the yearning stays”

It's Not Summer Without You (2010) by Jenny Han

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“Before Jeremiah or anybody else could answer me, I made a run for the sliding doors, and then I stumbled down the steps and sprinted onto the beach. I felt like a flying comet, a streak in the sky, like I hadn’t used my muscles in so long and it felt great to stretch my legs and run. The house, all lit up with people inside, felt a million miles away. I knew he’d come after me. I didn’t have to turn around to know […]



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