Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Featured Review Archive

These reviews, which were promoted in CBR social media, on our homepage, and in Pajiba Love, appear below by review publication date, not by date featured.

 

Amongst Women by John McGahern (recommended by Cillian Murphy)

Amongst Women by John McGahern

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A couple of months ago, I came across a Youtube short from Booktuber, Jack Edwards, asking Cillian Murphy and Max Porter for their book recommendations (the short has since gone viral!). That short was packed with some great suggestions (like Claire Keegan) and I’ve really come to enjoy Edwards’ coverage of famous people’s reading habits (a niche I didn’t know I needed)! Murphy recommended John McGahern and featured on the short was Amongst Women. I’d been looking for a short-ish read to start 2026 off […]

CBR 18 is going to be my bi*#$

The Beauty of the End by Lauren Stienstra

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I’m starting out with a bang this year by doing my first review in January! I’m all over the place with CBR’s. Last year I did 1 review for 2 books and I did it on NEW YEAR’S EVE! Yes, the day reviews were due and CBR 17 was closing. To cut myself some slack 2025 was a wee bit of a dumpster fire for my family. We had divorce, cancer, family moving in, too many cats, un-divorce… (everyone is fine now!) The year before […]

No One Despairs Quite Like a Well-Loved House Pet.

Woe: A Housecat's Story of Despair by Lucy Knisley

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I feel as though my reading year is starting off very slowly. I have a couple books on hand from the library that I’m having trouble sinking into and should probably return and try again later, I have been waiting for other things to come off holds, and had to wait for a book I purchased to be replaced since pages were falling out of the binding.  Plus, my attention span hasn’t really been great, either.   So, I decided to lean a bit into some of the short works I had selected for some […]

Please read Jessica Lewis!

Hallie’s Rules for a Recovering Romantic by Jessica Lewis

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I’ve loved Jessica Lewis’s books since her debut, Bad Witch Burning, and each new release just further cements how much I love her books and stories. After Nav’s book last year, I knew I needed to and could not wait to get my hands on Hallie’s book, and this was so good!! Hallie feels like she’s a failure and not good enough, especially after a few of her exes have treated her poorly or denigrated her, plus the pressure from her parents to be The […]

A timely book for the upcoming Olympics

The Favorites by Layne Fargo

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I saw The Favorites (2025) by Layne Fargo on some year-end, best-of lists and decided it was worth a try. It is a story loosely based on Wuthering Heights, written in the style of Daisy Jones & The Six, and based on the the competitive sport of ice dancing. Pairs figure skating was one of my favorite Olympic sports to watch back in the day, so I figured a book about ice dancing could be interesting. Katarina Shaw was obsessed with ice dancing ever since she was a kid, […]

Ignore This Siren’s Song

The Siren by Katherine St. John

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In “The Siren,” the handsome, famous, wealthy, charismatic, sexy Cole Powers is shooting a film on a small Caribbean island. The writer-director is Cole’s estranged son, Jackson. And the movie also stars Cole’s ex-wife, the actress Stella Rivers. Along for the ride is producer Taylor Wasserman (also estranged from her father), influencer Madison Kasabian, and Stella’s assistant, the very realistically named Felicity Fox. And half of them want to kill one of the others. I chose this book because although I usually prefer sci-fi and […]



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