Cannonball Read 12

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search This Site

About Ellesfena

CBR12 participantCBR11 participantCBR10 participantCBR 9CBR 8

My CBR goal this year is to review every new book I read--skipping reviews of rereads this time around.

Ellesfena's Reviews:

> FAQ Home
> Articles by: Ellesfena

The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship?

Two Girls Down by Louisa Luna

by Leave a Comment

There are so many mystery series with a similar premise to Two Girls Down: Hardbitten private investigator teams up with disgraced former cop (also a PI) to solve a case the police can’t. That’s not to say I didn’t like Two Girls Down, because I did. This is mostly due to the two main characters, Alice Vega (hardbitten PI) and Max “Cap” Caplan (former cop). Alice is the kind of character who’s fun to read about, because she’s unpredictable (and a total badass). I liked […]

The Gore Surprised Me, but It Shouldn’t Have

House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig

by Leave a Comment

The original “Twelve Dancing Princesses” fairy tale is surprisingly un-gory. Silly me, I thought a modern retelling would be the same. Not so much! If you’re not familiar with the original fairy tale, it goes something like this: there are twelve sisters (princesses, natch) who, every night, sneak out of their castle and dance all night at an enchanted ball. Their dad, the king, wants to know where they go every night so he sends out the call that anyone who can figure out their […]

Full of Highs and Lows

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

by 2 Comments

My experience with The Priory of the Orange Tree perfectly illustrates the pitfalls of reading on a tablet. I was happily reading along, thinking how much I was enjoying this book with its refreshingly updated take on fantasy, when all of a sudden, I thought, “Hmm. I’ve been reading this for a long time now and I still don’t know where any of this is going.” It was then that I checked and realized I’d been reading for at least two weeks, and was only […]

Maybe save this one for 2021.

Pandemic by Sonia Shah

by 5 Comments

I love reading about infectious diseases, I really do. And I love reading about the history of public health, particularly in relation to infectious diseases and pandemics. But was it wise to read a book about pandemics, and the weaknesses in our public health infrastructure, at this particular moment in time? Perhaps not! It’s impossible to review this book without acknowledging the very weird time we are in, and the fact that Sonia Shah, like so many other infectious disease journalists and experts around the […]

Life is Short, but it is Wide

In Pieces by Sally Field

by Leave a Comment

A year or so ago I won a copy of In Pieces during Cannonball Bingo. I was mildly pleased, as I like Sally Field and I like memoirs. I wasn’t excited enough to start reading it immediately, and in fact it took me a long time to read this, as I read it in fits and starts–mostly early in the morning on lazy weekends. Luckily, it’s an easy book to pick up again without forgetting what was happening when you left off. If you read […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo
  3. Google Pay