Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


About Zirza

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I am an English teacher from the Low Countries. Like everyone else I aspire to one day write a Booker Prize Winner, but until then I contend my self with reading stuff and writing about it. I try to keep the bitchiness to a minimum, but sometimes I can't help myself. In my spare time I enjoy complaining about the weather and sleeping. I lack the attention span for good books and the tolerance for bad ones. I am stuck in literary purgatory. Hey, at least it's warm here. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Zirza's Quick Questions interview.)

Zirza's Reviews:

Sad Gay Bois

Role Model (Game Changers #5) by Rachel Reid

The Long game (Game Changers #6) by Rachel Reid

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

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I don’t know how I ended up reading so many books about gay men this year (and I still have Song of Achilles on my TBR, so go figure) but by and large I’m enjoying myself, so whatever.    The Long Game (Rachel Reid) ***½ Shane and Ilya are back! Everyone’s favourite gay hockey players have moved from casual hookups to being in an actual, honest-to-God relationship – one that they still have to keep hidden from everyone because the media still pitches them as […]

Ice Ice Baby

Game Changers (Game Changers #1) by Rachel Reid

Heated Rivalry (Game Changers #2) by Rachel Reid

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In Game Changers, Kip Grady works in a juice bar and quietly hates his life when he meets famous hockey player Scott Hunter. Scott comes in to the bar several times and chats to Kip, and it takes Kip a while to realise Scott is hitting on him. The two embark on a relationship and though they get along like a house on fire, Kip wants more: he wants to be out, to be seen with Scott, not hidden away in his fancy apartment like […]

Shenanigans for Grown-Ups

The Break by Marian Keyes

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Every bubble in the galaxy has burst. The million shards of sparkle suspended in the air have turned to wet ash. All the colour has leached away and the world is just grey, grey, grey.  Amy O’Connell is a 44 year old mother of three daughters, married to Hugh. She loves him, but life is a dull and chaotic blur and while she realises that Hugh is struggling after the death of his father, she is blindsided when he tells her he wants to take […]

“To The Lighthouse” for the Climate Change Generation

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

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A young woman named Rowan washes up on the shore of an island. The island houses a seed vault. It used to house researchers, too, but they have all left; the island’s beaches are rapidly being swallowed up by the rising sea levels, and the only people left on the island are caretaker Dominic, who lives with his three children in the lighthouse. They find Rowan and take her in, nurse her back to health. It doesn’t take long, however, before they discover that she […]

(Mostly) Horror Roundup

London Rules (Slough House #5) by Mick Herron

The Drift by CJ Tudor

The Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig

November (Darker Days) by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

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London Rules (Slough House #5, Mick Herron) *** I enjoy the Slough House books, but I never do know what to write about them. They’re well written and the plot is usually creative and unpredictable, but in spite of that (or perhaps because of that) it’s always the same: River fucks something up, Louisa is prickly, Shirley is aggressive, Diana Taverner is sneaky and antagonistic and Jackson Lamb is smarter than everyone else. There is enough intrigue to keep things interesting (and the Apple TV […]

Ugh. Meh? Mwah. Ehn.

Lessons by Ian McEwan

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As in, I’m finding it hard to express my feelings about this book. Not because I enjoyed it (I didn’t). Eloquence is overrated anyway.  The plot: a young boy in 1960s England is sent to boarding school, is molested by his (female) piano teacher, then has a relationship with her that lasts for years and hampers him for the rest of his life. We watch Roland Baines grow up, faff around, have a child, fall in and out of love. The red thread in the […]



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