Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Anti-colonial historical fantasy

Aicha by Soraya Bouazzaoui

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I had such high hopes for Aicha because I love angry women, mythology, and historical fiction, so this sounded like it’d be exactly my jam. Unfortunately all those expectations fell flat. I wouldn’t say this is a bad book, and there were elements I enjoyed, I just don’t know that I’d say I enjoyed the book as a whole. Aicha is about the youngest daughter of a weapons smith, who is also a rebel, and how she also fights for her people’s liberation. But inside […]

Creepy kids! Drug addicts! Murder! Drawing!

Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak

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  How do you feel about kids who see ghosts? Generally, I don’t love the creepy kid genre, but this book is more of a “haunted kid” vibe. He’s not inherently creepy, but you know he’s been through some things. Our main character is Mallory, who is a recovering drug addict. She’s about a year and a half sober and living in a halfway house / community home / something like that, and trying to get a job to keep her life together. She’s a […]

Back to the orcs, rattkins, and elves!!

Brigands and Breadknives (Legends and Lattes #2) by Travis Baldree

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So this is book two in the Legends and Lattes universe. I read book 1 first (shocker!), and then book 0, and then book 2. This was definitely the correct order! We met Viv and Tandree in the first book, along with the rest of the Legends and Lattes crew. Then we traveled back in time to Viv meeting Fern. In this book, it’s about twenty years after Bookshops and Bonedust (Book 0), and Fern is travelling to Thune to open a bookshop next to […]

Hockey romance

Game Changer by Rachel Reid

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Inspired by the new, hit television show Heated Rivalry (a show I’ve heard of but not seen), my book club decided to read a random, hockey-themed romance novel paired with a field trip to watch a hockey game. The random, hockey romance novel was not a huge hit, so I decided to skip it and go straight to the source material. When I looked up Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid, I discovered that it is actually Book 2 of a series. So, I decided to start at the beginning […]

Do We Ever Really Know Our Parents?

The Nights are Quiet in Tehran by Shida Bazyar

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It sometimes feels likes a writer has used their work of fiction as a cathartic exorcism of their demons. The Nights are Quiet in Tehran feels like Shida Bazyar is laying bare parts of her own upbringing as the child of political refugees from Iran living in Germany. This gives the book a warmer, more personal touch than might have been achieved by another.   This book plays with form, switching 4 times between time periods and narrators as we follow the lives of Behzad, […]

Through a wizened glass

The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass by Stephen King

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Wizard and Glass is number four in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, and this is my second trip to the Tower. As a long Constant Reader, I always had mixed feelings about this book when I thought back on it. Most of the story takes place with Roland telling his ka-tet about his childhood and his first love, Susan, the girl in the window. It tells the story of three boys who are sent away, supposedly to keep them safe from being caught up in […]



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