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.

 

Not Exactly Mexican Gothic, But Close Enough

The Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzalez James

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cbr17bingo Border Now this was an interesting one.  Mexican Gothic is my jam, and I thought that this would be along that vein, but it turned out to be definitely its own thing – an intriguing cross between fictionalized family lore and magical realism.  And when I looked up the translation of Part Two – El Tragabalas, I discover that it is the book’s title in Spanish, but it is also the title of a fairly well known Mexican movie from the mid-60s, and the […]

Push by Sapphire | The Book behind ‘Precious’

Push by Sapphire

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I think most people have heard of the 2009 film ‘Precious’, even if they haven’t seen it. It’s notorious, one of the most upsetting films of all time. I saw ‘Precious’ two years ago, when I was sixteen and about to start therapy for my own post-traumatic stress. The film hit me hard and incredibly close to home, and I was completely floored. Since then, I have thought of it often. Now nineteen, out of therapy and off medication, I decided to read ‘Push’ – […]

Shifters, fairies, bake offs, oh myyyy

The Alpha and the Baker by Roxie Ray

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Y’all, when I tell you this delightfully sweet and sexy bon bon of a novel is everything I needed to take my mind off of [insert Kermit flail here] everything. I just didn’t know it when I started The Alpha and the Baker by Roxie Ray this morning. Castiel McAllister*, known by one and all as Cas, is a golden retriever of an alpha wolf shifter. Nary a grunt or assholery behavior to be found, only a desire for his pack to be safe, healthy […]

Short and sweet, with great illustrations

The Dragon of Og by Rumer Godden

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Our 2025 read-aloud journey continues! I found this one thanks to a list along the lines of, “If you liked The Hobbit…” We read it in one afternoon (it’s very short), and both kids give it two thumbs up. The titular dragon has a lovely home under a pool in a river belonging to Lord of Tundergarth, a home found for him by his thoughtful mother. He is a shy, quiet dragon who eats only one bullock every 2 or 3 weeks, from the cattle […]

“I love that the vagueness of “we lost our receptionist” implies he quit, died, or wandered into the woods where no one could find him.”

What Happens in Amsterdam by Rachel Lynn Solomon

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A first rate second chance romance. Plot: Dani is a late bloomer. Dealing with severe health issues as a kid has left her parents overprotective and her world was narrowed to meeting her physical needs, but others’ emotional needs. Still, after a bad breakup and a job loss, she finds herself taking on an opportunity to work for a start up in Amsterdam, an ocean away from her loving but controlling parents. Unfortunately, her cloistered childhood has left her without some necessary real world skills, […]

Delightful, entertaining, and informative

In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson

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CBR17Bingo: Migrant (because Australia is a country of migrants–beginning with the Aboriginals and their mysterious journey by ship thousands of years ago, to the first European migrants, to the current migrants [almost half of the population of Sydney was born overseas]). My husband and I began a tradition at our first anniversary of finding a book that relates to something we did during the year, and then we both read it. We haven’t been married very long, but we generally choose books about somewhere we […]



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