Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Emmalita

CBR 5
CBR 6
CBR 7
CBR 8
CBR 9
CBR10 participant
CBR11 participant
CBR12 participant
CBR13 participant
CBR14 Participant
CBR15 Participant
CBR16 Participant
CBR17 Participant
CBR18 Participant
CBR18 Levels
CBR18 Comments

Lives in Austin, Texas. She/her. Loves reading books, writing about books and talking about books. On the CBR Board. May send you an email. Thinking about new challenges. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Emmalita's Quick Questions interview.)

Emmalita's Reviews:

You Can Go Home Again

Anchored Hearts by Priscilla Oliveras

by 4 Comments

I enjoyed Priscilla Oliveras’ Island Affair last year and was happy to be approved for an advance reader copy of the second book in the series. Anchored Hearts is a slow burn second chance romance. Anamaria, the only Navarro daughter, is our main character. She is a fire-fighter/EMT like her father and brothers, but also has a fitness and nutrition side hustle that’s starting to become a full time job. Her first love and first heartbreak, Alejandro is reluctantly back in Key West recovering from a […]

Leaning More Towards Loathe than Love

To Love and to Loathe by Martha Waters

by 2 Comments

Oof. I thought this was going to be just another romance that I didn’t love but I didn’t hate and was maybe a victim of my pandemic brain. At the 78% mark, Waters turned it around to an “I cannot recommend this book at all.” Right up top I’m going to address my main issue. Waters has a side character who is revealed to be a lesbian and then the main character immediately tells her friends after swearing them to silence. And then she does […]

I suppose expecting an answer about your kidnapper’s prior experience is just silly

Neon Gods by Katee Robert

by 5 Comments

Katee Robert writes absolutely delightful candy. Her books are scorching hot and her sexual politics are good. She respectfully writes messy, complicated characters with scars (emotional and physical), but keeps it light enough not to be retraumatizing. I don’t become immersed in her worlds, but I do go back to them for escape and comfort. I was introduced to her Wicked Villains stories, which recasts the villains of Disney movies as the actual good guys. They live in a divided city with Hades sex club […]

CBR Diversions – In Praise of Difficult Women

by 27 Comments

For International Women’s Day, we are celebrating our favorite “difficult” women in books. I love reading about women who live their lives the way they want to live them, whether we call them strong, difficult, or even unlikable. It’s one of the reasons I read so much romance, it’s a genre where difficult women are rewarded with love and success. I asked four Cannonballers to share some of their favorite difficult women, fictional and real, from books. Teresalectro sings the praises of Kim Harrison’s Rachel Morgan: […]

What if I’m one of those people whose insecurities are right?

Knit, Purl, a Baby and a Girl by Hettie Bell

by Leave a Comment

There was a lot I loved about Hettie Bell’s Knit, Purl, a Baby and a Girl. It deals so graciously with surprise pregnancy, abortion and choice in reproductive rights, friendship, growing up and new relationships. Bell also does something that is one of my big pet peeves, which I will discuss behind a spoiler tag. This is a “your mileage may vary” book from an author I want to see more of. Poppy and Rhiannon meet when Poppy goes to Planned Parenthood to confirm her surprise […]

An Interesting Woman in a Sharp Suit

A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djeli Clark

by 4 Comments

A Dead Djinn in Cairo is like a bonbon. It’s perfect exactly as it is, but it leaves you wanting more, more, more. Special Investigator Fatma el-Sha’arawi is the interesting woman in the sharp suit, and we are dropped into her world with little fanfare. In Clark’s Cairo of 1912, the British and the French tried to colonize Egypt, but the sudden arrival of magical creatures drove them out. Some 40 years earlier, a man named al-Jahiz opened a portal allowing all kinds of djinn, […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo