Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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About faintingviolet

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A reader and caffeine addict who consumes all sorts of books, some just more frequently than others. Your CBR Book Club Maven with over a decade of Cannonballing experience I believe in the beauty that comes from a common goal of reading, reviewing, and discussing. Also, Fuck Cancer. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: faintingviolet's Quick Questions interview.)

faintingviolet's Reviews:

“I never stopped trying to save you, so don’t you fucking dare stop trying to save yourself.”

A Spindle Splintered (Fractured Fables #1) by Alix E. Harrow

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A Spindle Splintered is a queer retelling of the Sleeping Beauty fairytale, playing on the variations that exist and adding one of its own. The basic story has been around for almost seven hundred years and has flown through the hands of Basile, Perrault, and Grimm, and that’s before we get into the hundreds of adaptations so what’s another? Harrow brings her own lens to this, and imbues her lead, Zinnia Grey, with a wonderfully clear voice. It is so realistic that I initially thought […]

“There are two people inside me and they are at war with each other.”

Miss Iceland by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, Brian FitzGibbon (Translator)

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This is a book that you have to give yourself over to, you have to meet it where it is and accept its way of imparting the story, of whether there is a story at all, and how the author has built her main character, and how that main character chooses to share her world with you. Once you’ve done that the book embraces you like waves coming onshore. But is it the cold waters of the North Atlantic or something warmer? I have my […]

“Everyone loved being together and just fangirling over whatever they were reading.”

Meet Cute Club by Jack Harbon

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Last week the Twitter Discourse around Romance focused on fallout from a tweet by Jack Harbon about the intent of those outside a marginalized community writing exclusively about that community (he was specifically referring to women, often white women, writing only about queer men). Separate from the actual conversations that happened around that initial tweet, it made me realize that while I’ve read queer romance by queer women, non-binary authors, and those who identify as genderqueer I had not yet read a m/m romance written […]

“Only if we can develop a broadly shared understanding of our common history will it be practical to consider steps we could take to fulfill our obligations.”

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein

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The Color of Law is the reason I have been absolutely plowing through Romances I trust to help feed my brain some needed positive feelings as this book is a big important book about a topic that is rage inducing. In The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America Richard Rothstein marches the reader through the various manners by which the U.S. government has actively created and enforced the racial segregation we see all around us by baking it into […]

“She unsettled him; he anchored her. Together, they could be more than they were apart.”

Do You Want to Start a Scandal by Tessa Dare

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I had a good time with Do You Want to Start a Scandal, primarily because it does one of my favorite things by putting a good deal of emotional intelligence into a character who may not be expected to have it and then let them deduce the world around them. It is deployed to good use as Charlotte Highwood goes head-to-head with Diplomat turned Spy Piers Brandon, Lord Granville after they are caught together during the Parkhurst ball but are not in fact the couple […]

A Pair of Novellas for the February Holidays

A Fake Girlfriend for Chinese New Year by Jackie Lau

A Big Surprise for Valentine's Day by Jackie Lau

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When I read Donut Fall in Love two weeks ago I was reminded almost viscerally of two of Jackie Lau’s novellas from her Holidays with the Wongs series. The chemistry between Donut’s Ryan and Lindsay had the same sort of feeling that A Fake Girlfriend for Chinese New Year’s Zach and Jo did, and it made me want to revisit them, and with Chinese New Year this week (February 1st) I needed no further inducement to pick it back up and give myself a Monday […]



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