Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“A romance is a belief in the impossible: that anything ends happily.”

A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid

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This was really good but I can’t give it a full five stars for one reason. More on that reason below. But first! I enjoyed this so much! I said this in a status update while reading, but it was such a relief to have a YA book tackle what this book is trying to tackle* and have it SUCCEED instead of falling down on its face. Ava Reid, like her or not, is really talented. There are of course going to be people that […]

“Never trust. Never yield. Always guard your heart.”

The Serpent & The Wings of Night (Crowns of Nyaxia, #1) by Carissa Broadbent

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This was fun! I mean, as much fun as a gruesome and bloody murder competition can be, set in a world where humans are food because it is almost entirely populated by vampires. I wonder how much the edited version will change. I would re-read to find out! Our main character is Oraya, a human who was raised by the vampire king since she was a small child. He took her from the village he slaughtered. He was just like, oh yeah I’m gonna save […]

Absolutely no second book slump to be found. Not even close. The opposite of that.

The Kingdom of Copper (The Daevabad Trilogy, #2) by S.A. Chakraborty

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That was super intense. I need a break before diving into the last book, even though I need to know what happens. There are just some books that put you through it, and this is one of them. Luckily, the book is also excellent, which is a huge part of why the book was so affecting. This book picks up three (?) years after the events of City of Brass. I am not going to go into plot specifics bc it is labyrinthine, and won’t […]

Hot Priest Plus Actual Witch? OK, I’m Here For It.

The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas

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I have a new favorite niche – Mexican Gothic.  Actually this genre and I go way back to my high school days.  I was in Spanish III, junior year, and we read Doña Barbara by Romulo Gallego, written in 1929.  OK, it was actually a Venezuelan novel rather than Mexican, but I suspect the landed gentry in those two countries were not all that different back in those days.  Of course, my Spanish was still fledgling, so what was going on was frequently a mystery, […]

I want to live in this book.

Clean Sweep (Innkeeper Chronicles, #1) by Ilona Andrews

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“…Something isn’t right with you and this property. Strange things happen around it. I don’t know what is going on, but I will find out. You could make it easier on yourself by coming clean.” “Sure. This is a magic bed-and-breakfast and the two guys in my kitchen are aliens from outerspace.” Blurb from the back of the book: “On the outside, Dina Demille is the epitome of normal. She runs a quaint Victorian Bed and Breakfast in a small Texas town, owns a Shih […]

“I had rather face wild beasts and diseases than the perils of civilization.”

Voyage of the Basilisk (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #3) by Marie Brennan

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This series is a nerdy good time. And this book in particular really leaned into the scholarly nature of Lady Trent’s calling. The last book, a lot of page-time was taken up by Lady Trent and her companions navigating local and global politics while trying to learn about dragons, and while that is a factor here, too, Voyage of the Basilisk feels more balanced, with a focus more clearly on her science and what she got up to while doing it, and also on her personal relationships […]



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