Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Messy, grief-filled story

The Minus-One Club by Kekla Magoon

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Oof, this book is messy and emotional. At it’s center The Minus-One Club is a story of grief and finding your way forward after the death of a loved one, but it is also a story of friendship and identity. Kermit just lost his sister after a drunk driver hit her car head-on, and now he has to go back to school and try getting back to “normal.” But he finds an anonymous note in his locker inviting him to a secret meeting, where other […]

“Like any dealer he was watching for the card that is so high and wild”

Every Gift a Curse (2023) by Caroline O'Donoghue

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“I can feel our bravery fall away as we journey into the wood. We are not built for this. We are not the folksy teenagers you see in adventure stories. There is no one who’s a dab hand at archery, or who can chart our journey by looking at the last few visible stars.” (371-372) Every Gift a Curse is the third and final in Irish author Caroline O’Donoghue’s YA ‘Gifts’ trilogy, following All Our Hidden Gifts (2021) and The Gifts That Bind Us (2022). […]

“When you catch someone lying about a murdered girl, you go ask them why”

A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

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CBR15 Passport Challenge – New to me author Five years ago, blonde and beautiful high school girl Andie Bell was murdered, although no one ever found her body, despite careful searching. However, Andie’s boyfriend Sal Singh confessed in a text message to his dad and then committed suicide before he could be arrested by the police. So everyone knows that he did it, and the case is closed. Pippa Fitz-Amobi remembers Sal Singh as a kind and considerate young man, with a promising university career […]

“My inner being is exceptionally cranky and I often don’t want her company myself.”

The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik

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CBR Passport Challenge: Books Recommended by Friends This is the second book in a trilogy. It doesn’t really make sense if you’ve not read the series from the beginning. So if you’re not caught up, go read A Deadly Education. It’s great, I’ll wait. El and Orion are now seniors in the Scholomance, and they have absolutely no way of knowing if their very dangerous mission just before graduation to fix the furnaces worked. Did they manage to clear the graduation hall of the majority […]

Eliza Has Monsters

Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia

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Eliza has external and internal monsters. She has the external high school kind of monsters who like to pick on and reject anyone who seems different. She has the internal monsters of anxiety and insecurity. And of course, she has the monsters that she has created for her webcomic. Eliza is the creator of a highly popular webcomic called Monstrous Sea. She publishes under a pseudonym, and very few people in her life know that she and her nom de plume LadyConstellation are the same person. […]

A story of finding yourself

The Long Run by James Acker

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The Long Run is such a great story of two young boys finding their way and finding themselves along the way. Sandro is invisible in so many ways and he’s learned to protect his softness by keeping to himself, especially as his dad and brothers like to “pick on him” in a way that crosses from affectionate into toxic. Bash is having trouble deciding who he is and who he wants to be outside what those around him expect, and in the process has been […]



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