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.

 

When in doubt, tea.

Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor

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cbr16bingo golden Mrs. Palfrey, recently widowed, has had to make a decision regarding the rest of her life.  She has no home of her own, since she had spent most of her life stationed in Burma with her husband.  She had been temporarily staying with her daughter in Scotland, but clearly that was no permanent solution.  So she eyed the London papers and settled on the Claremont Hotel in South Kensington.  After all, her grandson, whom she had rarely seen, worked nearby at the British […]

“When you’re growing up, you don’t ask whether your family’s good, do you? Especially if you don’t know anything else. They’re just your family.”

Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs

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Stepmoms in pop culture get a bad rap. Actually bad rap isn’t right. We are maligned and reduced to a trope, typically gold diggers, people who don’t like kids, and someone who isn’t at all interested in the work of parenting (i.e., the original OG stepmoms like Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, and Snow White or modern like Parent Trap, or the newer Parent Trap, repeat infinity with basically every stepmom forever). In a recent episode of my podcast (linked here, self-promotion is never done) I […]

Enemies to Lovers Done Wrong and Done Right

How to End a Love Story by Yulin Kuang

Guava Flavored Lies by J J Arias

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I started listening to two audiobooks in the same day. One was on the way to work, the other on the way back. Why? Because the 25 minutes on the way to work was enough of How to End a Love Story for a lifetime. I had high hopes for this story touted as an angsty enemies-to-lovers story that would make any reader cry. I love me some angst, and will feel plenty of those tearful emotions in my heart. And of course, enemies-to-lovers is my favorite. […]

A Spoooky Gothic Romance

The Cruel Dark by Bea Northwick

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You’re promising me some traumatic amnesia, a giant scary estate, and possible ghosts and/or fairy shenanigans? Yes please thank you Bea Northwick! A perfect read for the week before Halloween. Millicent Foxboro is alone in the world. Having overcome a difficult childhood and amnesia that mysteriously erased four years of her life, she now craves stability. When an unexpected job offer arrives with a ridiculously large salary Millicent feels she must take it. She arrives at the once grand but now overgrown estate with its […]

Sitcoms opening people’s minds and hearts

Hi Honey, I'm Homo! by Matt Baume

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I like to listen to audiobooks in my car, and I found Hi Honey, I’m Homo!: Sitcoms, Specials, and the Queering of American Culture (2023) by Matt Baume on NPR’s Favorite Books List. Baume discusses how sitcoms used characters and plots involving gay/trans characters or lightly disguised allegory that may have helped middle America become a little more tolerant than before. Because this book generally goes in chronological order, many of the shows that Baume begins writing about were ones I was not familiar with. These included Soap and All in […]

A Personal Story of Deconstruction

The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church by Sarah McCammon

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The story: The Exvangelicals is a nonfiction book written by Sarah McCammon, who grew up in the white evangelical Christian movement in the 80s and 90s. As an adult, she deconstructed (began examining and questioning her religious beliefs), and discovered that many others who had grown up in the same circumstances as her were doing the same. The book includes recollections from her childhood and her deconstruction process, interviews with others who have left the white evangelical church, and information on the history and current status of […]



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