Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“I wonder what it would be like to be free?”

Before We Were Free by Julia Alvarez

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Before We Were Free by Julia Alvarez My rating: 3 of 5 stars It wasn’t until I was in college completing classes for my Spanish degree that I learned about the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. I was disappointed in my education up to that point, that I had never learned about this tragic time in Dominican history. Since college, I have rarely heard about Trujillo and his regime mentioned. I have taught one of Julia Alvarez’s short stories in my English classes and […]

Emotional Historical YA

Nothing Sung and Nothing Spoken by Nita Tyndall

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Yup, I cried, but no one is surprised. Nothing Sung and Nothing Spoken is a story of resistance and making joy during dark times, as well as family and love. It is a story that examines when safety stops being enough and it’s time to resist and push back against harmful regimes. It is also the story of a group of friends navigating their friendship and society when it’s not safe to be Jewish, it’s not safe to be queer, it’s not safe to be […]

Here, where the two worlds embraced, and magic rose to the Earth…

Snake Falls To Earth by Darcie Little Badger

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CBR14 BINGO: Snake Square (BINGO! Snake to Elephant) (Again, another literal one: Snake in the title. One of the main characters is a cottonmouth snake.) Aside from the joy it brings my non-athletic yet competitive spirit, I love CBR Bingo for all of the books it brings into my life. Keyword bingo square Google searches have introduced me to different authors and books that I may have never found otherwise. Like this one. The story takes place in two worlds: Earth and the Reflecting World. In the […]

A little disappointed in this one.

The Merciless Ones (Deathless, #2) by Namina Forna

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I’ve been going back and forth, and then back and forth again over whether to round this up to four or down to three stars. I think I’m settling on three stars because the plot made my head swim, and not in a good way. No one but Deka, Ixa, and perhaps Britta get significant development, so I had very little incentive to actually remember who any of them were, which didn’t help with my confusion. This is very different from the first book, where […]

Never Trust the Fae

Stars, Hide Your Fire by Kel McDonald, Jose Pimienta

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Somewhere in Massachusetts, two best friends, Darra and Andrea, struggle with the reality of growing up and growing apart. As they start high school and consider their futures, one wants to stay put while the other can’t wait to get away, which inevitably strains their friendship. When they break into an abandoned, supposedly haunted factory and the ghostly woman trapped there offers one of them eternal youth, they accidentally unleash something sinister on their unsuspecting small town. I really liked this one, which is unsurprising […]

Another fight to the death book, pretty good.

All of Us Villains (All of Us Villains, #1) by Amanda Foody & Christine Lynn Herman

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The end of this was messy, but overall I liked it. Really wishing for half-stars on this one. ELEVEN DAYS LATER: Okay, now that I’m actually sitting down to write this review, I’ve decided to round down on this one because the ending really killed my buzz. It was just so messy, I’m not even sure how to explain it. The premise here is that there is a town where every twenty years or so, there is a tournament, the family of the tournament winner […]



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