Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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.

 

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 […]

Really World Class Manga About the Power of Art

Blue Period (Volumes 1-6) by Tsubasa Yamaguchi

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I’d been circling this series for a long time, flipping through the first volume occasionally at the bookstore, and then getting intimidated by the length and also my concern that it seemed emotionally stressful, but I wanted to read it enough that I asked for the first six volume box set for Christmas. Well, I’m really glad that I did that, because what a treat! Blue Period is about a teenage boy, Yatora Yaguchi, who is seen by his parents and peers as a successful and […]

He’s like a star, his gravity pulling Jordan out of his own orbit into Jamie’s.

Last First Kiss by Julian Winters

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Julian Winters’s Last First Kiss has some really excellent yearning. Jordan is trying to prove himself in his new role at the family event planning business and humor his mother by going on a blind date that might be the start to his forever love story. But his cousin’s best friend, Jamie, is making both of those things difficult. Jamie, in the guise of practicing, gave Jordan his first kiss. Jordan has never forgotten it, and maybe neither has Jamie. Jordan is trying to plan […]

Playing Darkly

Darkly by Marisha Pessl

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I am a big fan of Marisha Pessl’s writing, Special Topics in Calamity Physics was a book that reminded me of The Secret History except a lot more fun. Night Film felt like a noir detective novel but more.  Now with Darkly, it is yet another mystery novel and yet so much more. Right off the bat we are introduced to Arcadia “Dia” Collins who basically runs her mother’s antique shop (as her mother and the old doddering couple seem to just bumble around adorably). Her world gets […]

Writing as therapy: the latest Dresden Files novel

Twelve Months by Jim Butcher

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The publication gap between Battle Ground and the new book Twelve Months has been over 5 years, the longest in this series. The back-to-back of Peace Talks and Battle Ground left Harry Dresden in a bad place, and from reading that – and now Twelve Months – it was clear to me that Jim Butcher didn’t appear to be in a good place either. That’s proved true as he’s spoken about his depression, and a divorce that left him struggling – but also not in such a bad […]



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