Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About ElCicco

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Married, mom of two, history PhD, feminist. I've been participating in Cannonball Read since CBR4. I love to read, and writing reviews keeps me from reading without thinking. I feel like I owe it to the authors who entertain me to savor their creations. It's like slowing down and enjoying a delicious meal instead of bolting your food. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: ElCicco's Quick Questions interview.)

ElCicco's Reviews:

This one goes to a pretty dark place

Vicious: A Novel (Villains Book 1) by V.E. Schwab

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Cbr16bingo Part 1 This is the second novel I’ve read recently that deals with heroes and villains, and with the notion that “heroes” are actually pretty terrible people. Hench was a great read, and I was immediately sucked in to Vicious, too. In both stories, the “bad guys” actually are the people who seem to have a better sense of what is the right thing to do, but they still aren’t completely good people. This is a pretty dark novel and absolutely not for the […]

MysterFantsyMance

The Fox Wife: A Novel by Yangsze Choo

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Cbr16bingo Smash mystery/fantasy/romance = MysterFantsyMance The Fox Wife is a beautiful novel that combines mystery, fantasy and romance, and even some history. Set in China and Japan in the early 20th century, its main characters deal with the pangs of first love, lost love, obsessive love, and the loss of children against a backdrop of revolution and a world in the grip of major change. Author Yangsze Choo writes at the end of this story about her personal interest in the fox legends of China […]

“…superheroes, for all their good PR, were terrible for the world.”

Hench: A Novel by Natalie Zina Walschots

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Cbr16bingo cult Anna is good at crunching numbers and analysis, and she puts those skills to work as a henchman for any villain looking for help. But times are tough. She had had a pretty good gig going, but the thing about henching is that eventually superheroes destroy lairs, and that means layoffs. Anna along with her friends June and Greg find themselves back at the temp agency (there is a temp agency just for henchmen) desperate for some job, any job, that will pay […]

“When does who you’re pretending to be stop being a pretense and turn into who you really are?”

Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis

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Cbr16bingo Fiasco A guy wakes up, injured, on the floor of an evil looking castle room. Who did this to him? What evil force has been at work?? Who is responsible for the tacky decor??? Though his memories are mostly gone, he realizes he did it. He is a dark wizard and he somehow is responsible for all of it. It’s a dreadful conclusion to reach, and Gav (aka the Dread Lord Gavrax), looking around at his garishly evil castle and the way his goblin […]

Oh the weather outside is frightful!

Season of Love by Helena Greer

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I was sorry to miss the recent Zoom with Helena Greer. I was not quite finished with this, her first novel when it occurred but more importantly life was kind of imploding here. Season of Love was just the right book to be reading — a romance set during the holiday season in a cold snowy upstate New York. It’s sort of like one of those Hallmark movies but this time for lesbians. Unlike a Hallmark movie though it gets into some heavy areas regarding […]

Job burn out takes a turn for the literal

A Witch’s Guide To Burning by Aminder Dhaliwal

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This graphic novel is the story of a journey in which magical outcasts, thrown together by fate, must learn to trust and rely on one another in order to heal, grow and find the strength to battle demons. Aminder Dhaliwal has created a magical world with its own unique set of rules. Witches are valued and esteemed so long as they do their job for their towns. Once their magic weakens, they are “cleansed” by fire and a new witch takes over. It’s an old […]



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