Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A book to experience, but you are not always glad you did.

Man-Eaters Volume 1 by Chelsea Cain

by Leave a Comment

I was not sure what Man-Eaters Volume 1 was going to be about by the cover. But since it was in the children’s/young adult section I figured it could not be too bad. Okay, maybe a few big cats or dogs or some funny-looking “scary” monster were going to attack people but nothing I hadn’t seen before. Just a thriller story. There was a “funny-looking scary monster” all right. It is called the Female Teenager. Chelsea Cain and various illustrators created a graphic novel series […]

Reads darker than it is, overall worth it

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater

Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater

The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater

by 1 Comment

This is a series I’m genuinely surprised I hadn’t heard about sooner. It’s right up my alley – young adult, vaguely supernatural, lots of mystery, everything about this series has me written all over it. It’s even been out for a couple of years! Still not sure where the ball dropped for me on this one. A broad overview: our main character is Blue Sargent, a teenage non-psychic living in the Shenandoah Valley near a prep boarding school (Aglionby) full of boys she broadly cannot […]

Splashing into the Rivers of London

Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch

by 2 Comments

I’d seen this author and series pop up from time to time in CBR, and my curiosity finally overcame my aversion to jumping into a series. How could I continue to ignore the siren call of that terrific cover?! I am ever-so-glad that I went ahead and judged a book by its cover, because I thoroughly enjoyed this police-procedural-gone-off-the-rails. It had all of the inner workings of the police bureaucracy that I, for some reason  find strangely enthralling. The officers had all of the spark […]

Does the Actual Plot Feel a Little Secondary to the Romance? Yes. Does that Really Matter? Mileage May Vary, but It’s Fine by Me!

Spellbound (Magic in Manhattan #1) by Allie Therin

by 2 Comments

As I continue my journey with audiobooks (a new development for me over the past couple of months), my enjoyment of them has varied considerably depending on the narrator. In this case, it was a mixed bag: for the most part it was good but as the reading went on it’s as if more quirky inflections and voices were being out on to differentiate characters and moods, and honestly I’m learning that I hate the addition of silly voices to distinguish the characters. I can […]

Probably the best book of 2020

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

by 1 Comment

Oh nooo I am so beyond behind. I joined this Slack where I can talk about book endlessly and it’s sapped enough of my book-talking energy that I totally lost track of my reviews. I haven’t stopped reading, just writing these, so lets watch me play a giant game of catch up. I’ll group a lot together but! This one deserves its own post. The Starless Sea. I loved The Night Circus beyond words and was ecstatic when she announced a second book and somehow […]

And they lived Happily Ever After. The End.

Prince and Knight by Daniel Haack

by Leave a Comment

When I first saw Prince and Knight by Daniel Haack, my first thought was, “This is a board book. Are kids that age ready for this theme?” And then I thought, “Why not?” However, we need to introduce the idea of same sex couples on a level that a child can understand. And this book does that by creating a story that is straight forward and does not preach its message. It is a simple (but not simplistic) story about a same sex couple. Kids […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo