Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Did I mention the NOT cows????

Black Sand Beach V01: Are You Afraid of the Light? by Richard Fairgray

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Black Sand Beach V01: Are You Afraid of the Light? is a fun mystery in a traditional modern comic/graphic novel format. The spooky is spooky for the 10 to 14 crowd (slightly younger could do as well, but this is not for the overly sensitive reader as there are skeleton/zombie ghosts, a haunted lighthouse, odd looking characters who might have a live body in a bag, and um… not cows … wandering around).  But nothing is really over the top. Except, it is. There is no seriousness […]

Dresden Returns!

Peace Talks by Jim Butcher

Battle Ground by Jim Butcher

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After a longer than usual gap Harry Dresden returned this year in not one, but two, books. Well… kind of. The reality is that Peace Talks and Battle Ground are really one book that got too long for the publisher and so it got split. At a guess this lengthened the writing process as there would have been some rework to try and create a division and narrative for both books. It didn’t entirely work which is why I didn’t review until I’ve had the […]

Devastatingly beautiful. I cried, not because it was necessarily sad but due to the amount of emotion.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

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V.E. (Victoria) Schwab was introduced to me by my favorite bookstore, Mysterious Galaxy and it was love at first read.  By pre-ordering the The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, I was able to get a personalized book plate and used my birthday present book embosser to further claim the book.  Those actions decrease the re-sale value of a book but this is one I won’t be giving up! The simplest explanation of the plot is it is a Faustian deal between Adeline LaRue and a god-like, […]

He is full of roots, while she has only branches.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

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This author is definitely on my “put in a library request as soon as a new title shows up” list. Schwab’s Shades of Magic series is phenomenal and while I didn’t enjoy them as much, the Monsters of Verity YA series was also very good. I entered her literary treasure trove with the explosion of A Darker Shade of Magic (thanks to many, many CBR reviews way back when) and have been holding off on reading her previous books because it’s always sad when you […]

Ehhh, it was fine, but a lot of the magic was lost from the first

The Glamourist by Luanne G. Smith

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I really enjoyed the first book in this series The Vine Witch. Interesting magic, self-contained story, solid pacing, believable romance, fun mix of characters. The Glamourist, the second entry in The Vine Witch series, loses a lot of the fun and magic of the first book. While still a self-contained story which I greatly appreciate, The Glamourist lacks focus and fails to add anything interesting to the stories of characters that stick around. It’s– fine. Vine witch and potion master, Elena Boureanu, finds herself in Paris with her […]

A perfect late autumn read: atmospheric with a twist

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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I realized, when it came time to do my best-of lists, that I hadn’t actually written reviews for two of my favourite books this year. Mexican Gothic is one of these. I read it a few weeks after Halloween, when everything in Denmark can best be described as ‘grey’ and I was in the perfect mood for Gothic. (Plus, look at that AMAZING and GORGEOUS cover; how can you resist?) Boy, did Silvia Moreno-Garcia deliver. Mexican Gothic is the story of Noemi, a young woman […]



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