Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

In the immortal words of Ron Swanson: “Never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing.”

The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee

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I pulled Mackenzi Lee’s The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue off the shelf just before leaving on a trip to Paris, partly because I knew Paris featured in at least some of the action and also because I had just finished The Song of Achilles and felt like reading another YA boy-boy romance. But mostly it just seemed like a perfect vacation book, easy and breezy, and at least for that, it did not disappoint. Henry “Monty” Montague is the ne’er-do-well son of an […]

A (not so) funny thing happened on the way to writing this review

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

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I was finally caught up with my reviews at the end of March, and then everything went to hell. I spent a week in Paris (yay!) but came home to what I thought was a simple but nasty case of jetlag + airplane cold but which turned out to be . . . THE FLU. And let me just say that jetlag and three days of crazy-loud home repairs and several days of high fever/chills/aches/lungs-filled-with-pure-evil are not conducive to being productive. Moral of the story: […]

Justice served with a side of pineapple. That’s what I’m here for.

Sunbolt by Intisar Khanani

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Sunbolt is one of those books that suck you in and you can’t put down. We meet Hitomi as she is on her way to a secret meeting that she hasn’t been invited to. A fortune teller stops her and begs to tell her fortune (which is of course delightfully vague and thrillingly ominous) telling her to run. Soon, sure enough the armed guards of the evil Blackflame are at her heals and she must run to escape them. Not just because she is foreign, […]

Better Than the Last Two Books in Series

A Question of Holmes by Brittany Cavallaro

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Please note that this review spoils some events from prior books. Well I try to complete series even when I dislike them since sometimes the author can pull things together. Cavallaro almost manages to redeem her characters in the fourth book in the Charlotte Holmes series, but for me, I found myself mostly bored about the case that Charlotte and her Watson were doing in this one. Cavallaro mostly focuses on Charlotte and Watson’s relationship and we now have Charlotte’s POV for the majority of […]

Post-apocalypse with angels.

Angelfall (Penryn & the End of Days, #1) by Susan Ee

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I read this way back in 2012, and at the time I was pretty enthusiastic about it. I’ve read a lot more YA since then, and a lot more self-published books, so the shine has worn off a little. Also, I now think I understand why, even though I bought book two on release date, I have never gotten around to reading it, and that is because the world Susan Ee has created is FLIPPING TERRIFYING. A very large part of me doesn’t want to […]

Some Problems, but the Ending’s Worth It

I Kill Giants by Joe Kelly, JM Ken Niimura

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I try not to look at too many reviews of something before I actually read it, but usually skim through a few to get an idea of whether or not I’ll like something. I don’t always agree, but this time I did. On both the positive and negative. I Kill Giants gets praised for both its exploration of a child dealing with grief and trauma, and its narrative structure; but criticism for some characters and use of hateful language in a few places. I agree […]



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