Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

About Nart

CBR12 participant
CBR13 participant
CBR14 Participant
CBR15 Participant
CBR16 Participant
CBR17 Participant
CBR18 Participant

Nart is an avid romance reader who dabbles in other stuff when she has the spoons. When she’s not reading she’s a bureaucrat both professionally and as an activist because she’s a masochist. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Nart's Quick Questions interview.)

Nart's Reviews:

“People get too caught up in how things look instead of how things feel”

Lovelight Farms by B K Borison

by Leave a Comment

An unexpectedly lovely holiday romance. I didn’t know they made those. Plot: Stella grew up without being able to set down roots. She and her mom moved around a lot, and among other issues, had very limited funds. But every year, her mom would find a Christmas tree farm that let people come in for free, and they’d spend some time taking in some holiday magic. She wanted that magic, and to share it with others. And more than anything, she wanted to set down […]

“What is unbearable is already too much. How can there be more?”

It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over by Anne de Marcken

by Leave a Comment

What an unexpected and wonderful read. I think we’ve reached peak post-zombie apocalypse writing. It is no longer in vogue to write about them, but they have become such an integral part of our pop culture that they are now extremely useful vehicles for some intense post-modern existentialism. de Marcken uses the zombie trope fully, and only as it suits her purposes. The book explores themes of love, of loss, and of identity. Who are we? What are we? how do we move past unendurable […]

“Your only chance is to grab hold of happiness when you have it, and enjoy it for as long as it lasts.”

Goodnight from London by Jennifer Robson

by Leave a Comment

Plot: An ambitious young journalist with a secret makes her way across the Atlantic to what she hopes is her big break – reporting on the domestic (i.e. women’s) angle of the growing war in Europe in the summer of 1940.  Her journey takes us on an intimate journey of the war, from the basic ways in which meals were affected by rations to the massive toll of civilian losses during the Blitz to the war zones in France and back. Through it all, Ruby […]

“I’m a work in progress.”

When Javi Dumped Mari by Mia Sosa

by Leave a Comment

Something of a blend of When Harry Met Sally and My Best Friend’s Wedding.  Plot: Javi and Mari have been best friends since university. Mari is the DEI hater’s wet dream. She’s what I imagine AOC would have been like in university. Fierce, intelligent, and intensely intimidating. She is too much for pretty much everyone and she deals with it by never really giving her whole heart to anyone. So when Javi meets her and catches feelings, he decides never to venture down that path. She is too […]

“I forgot that I owed my success partly to the advantages of my birth and environment, and largely to the helpfulness of others.”

Midstream: My Later Life by Helen Keller

by Leave a Comment

Keller is, of course, famous for being both deaf and mute and her journey to find a way to develop and communicate with the world outside her mind. Her first autobiography follows her journey to university. This autobiography finds Keller in mid life, having experienced the world as an adult. I first became interested in Helen Keller through a couple articles I read in which she, as it turned out, had a lot more opinions than just with respect to her disabilities (shocking, I know). […]

“You need to define who you are. Otherwise, people will happily do it for you.”

Yinka, Where Is Your Husband by Lizzie Damilola Blackburn

by Leave a Comment

Plot: Yinka is a highly educated, successful businesswoman with a life and friends and a family intensely fixated on her lack of marital prospects. On the wrong side of thirty, Yinka decides it’s time to take the bull by the horns, and really commit to resolving that outstanding issue. The fact that she’s just been laid off after having sort of lied to her mother about her having gotten promoted, and the fact that she didn’t actually like her job or trust her friends has […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo