Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“WITCH WANTED. Live-in tutor wanted for three young witches. Must have nerves of steel. Previous teaching experience not necessary. Witchiness essential.”

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna

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Mary Poppins except she doesn’t leave at the end. Plot: Mika Moon is a witch. Like all other witches, she was orphaned young and has lived a fairly isolated life since they have to keep their magic a secret. Her one outlet is a youtube channel where she pretends to do magic, just to share in the love of it with others. Someone’s noticed that she’s the real deal though, and they want her as their own Mary Poppins, since the kids are doing things […]

A Tale of Two Nearly Identical Books, Or Cozy Witch Com Books By The Numbers

The Unfortunate Side Effects of Heartbreak Magic by Breanne Randall

Witch of Wild Things by Raquel Vazquez Gilliand

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I started with one of these books because I just needed a cozy witchy book with some small town and some herbs and some love story that ends in HEA or maybe not, maybe the romance is the B Plot, maybe they just bat eyelashes and it ends with hope. Then I ditched that book 50% of the way in because, Dear Reader, it was upsetting and whatever the opposite of charming is. I had the other on deck and, based solely on the cover and a quick […]

Medieval Over Time in Pictures Has No Substance

The Fantasy of the Middle Ages by Larisa Grollemond, Bryan C Keene

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I realize that The Fantasy of the Middle Ages was basically designed as an accompaniment to an exhibit at the Getty Museum and as such was possibly never meant to be a fully standalone book. Except that it now is, and as a stand-alone book, this is beyond shallow. It has a lot of pretty pictures, but often with little context of the history or art of the source manuscript) , and it brings up aa lot of things about how the Middel Ages in […]

I demand book two this instant.

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Emily Wilde, #1) by Heather Fawcett

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Kicking myself for not writing this review immediately after finishing this book. I was on such a book high and now it’s been two months, and my brain is useless. Because I really want to do this one justice! I want more people to read it and enjoy it like I did. Emily Wilde is a scholar, and her field of study is faeries. She is aiming to write the first comprehensive encylopaedia of faeries that has ever been published. On a scholarly research trip […]

A Gentle, Heartwarming Story of Magic and Humanity

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

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TJ Klune manages to weave the mundane and fantastical together in this heartwarming novel. Linus Baker is a caseworker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth (DICOMY), which registers and tracks magical children (and later adults with the Department in Charge of Magical Adults – DICOMA). He visits orphanages of magical children to make sure they are being well-run, and when he’s not out on field assignments, he’s one of hundreds of drudges toiling away at desks in DICOMY. He has no life to […]

wtf was this book?? anyone else?

The Curator by Owen King

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This book has one of the lowest average ratings on Goodreads I’ve ever seen*; it’s currently sitting at a 3.01, where anything under 3.5 is considered low, and anything under 3.25 is pretty dire. You see a rating like that and your first instinct is, “Whoa, what’s going on here??” And honestly, I understand it. I read this book back in March (it is now late June) and I’m still not sure if I even liked it. It is an extremely weird reading experience with […]



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