Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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About Emmalita

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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:

Delicately unpacking a whole lot of emotional baggage

Just a Highland Fling by Naina Kumar

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There was a point in Just a Highland Fling where Neelu is in the car with her estranged father and her one night stand antagonist, and I thought, “no one handles emotional baggage like Naina Kumar.” Highland Fling is a lot of fun. I enjoyed it enormously. It’s a good road trip romance with forced proximity, sheep, daddy issues, and a hot Desi bagpiper/poetry professor. What I really loved though was the way Kumar handled big raw feelings and their fallout with delicacy. Neelu is […]

Some very enjoyable bits, but ultimately didn’t come together for me

Fossil Feud by Maggie North

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I don’t know if it was mood, book hangover from a bunch of fantastic books, or craft problems, but it took a lot of effort for me to finish Fossil Feud. Fossil Feud was my first book from Maggie North, and my unfamiliarity with the author’s style might have been part of the problem. There were parts that I enjoyed a lot, but I ended up wanting more and less. My biggest frustration was with the love interest, Dr. James Smithson. He never felt real […]

Marrying for health insurance and real estate

Married with Benefits by Ellie Palmer

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A marriage of convenience for health insurance and real estate is so appropriate for 2026. I would marry someone for good health insurance, sadly, I don’t have real estate to trade. Married With Benefits takes on that question of who could we be if we weren’t constantly struggling to survive? Lainey is incredibly competent and a talented artist, but to eat she drives for Uber in her small Wisconsin town. Lainey suffers from debilitating migraines, which are quite treatable, but the prescription medication is expensive. […]

In the best way, this was not at all what I was expecting.

Book Club Boyfriend by Jenny Holiday

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I was expecting to enjoy Jenny Holiday’s Book Club Boyfriend. She has a talent for blending charming characters and easy breezy writing with some deeply emotional topics. In Book Club Boyfriend, she reshapes her typically good writing and pushes the boundaries of genre romance to give us her best book to date. I’ve read a bunch of fantastic books recently, and this one grabbed me and shook me. Blair (most likely inspired by Reese Witherspoon, but this is not veiled real person fanfic) and Jack […]

CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge Begins

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Welcome to the 2026 Book Bingo Reading Challenge! Now is the time to dig through those books you read but didn’t review, or pick up that book you’ve been thinking about. Bingo is about vibes and creative interpretations. Most importantly, it’s about fun. The words (or numbers) in the circles are meant to be inspiration. They can be a word in the title, an image on the cover, or spark an idea. I’ve listed some possibilities below, but if I’ve learned anything from Bingo, it’s […]

Pining, Second Chances, Plots, and Strategies

Just for the Season by Rachel Griffiths

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tl:dr: I am bumbling around trying not to tell you everything about Just for the Season. It works on many levels. I enjoyed Rachel Griffith’s first book, The Trouble with Anna, but I immediately knew that Charlotte and Wolfgang were going to be the couple I wanted to know more about. Charlotte romps her way through Trouble, while Wolfgang has a rather short, but memorable, cameo. Still, I’ve been reading romance long enough to know when characters are meant for each other. A few years […]



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