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.

 

The Light, The Dark, and The Dragon

Consort of Fire by Kit Rocha

by Leave a Comment

Consort of Fire was an insta-buy because I love the author duo Kit Rocha to pieces! Their new duology kicks off with Sachielle on her way to become the said consort of a mysterious dragon lord. He is a powerful man named Ash who can literally become a dragon. This immortal dude is pretty scary, but Sachi isn’t afraid. She has been dreaming of fire and determined to seduce him… The twist is she is on a lifelong path to assassinate him lest she will […]

sometimes you just want to be in a low-fi band with your sister, but a literal battle between immortality and death gets in the way

The Book of Love by Kelly Link

by 7 Comments

Absolutely perfect. No one can harness both the magic and ennui of being a teenager like Kelly Link. People will be handing this down to younger siblings for generations. Susannah and Laura are sisters. They are also band mates. The third member of their band, Daniel is their best friend and next-door neighbor. Oh, and Susannah’s friend-with-benefits. On the night of Daniel’s birthday, at a wild dive bar with a real carousel on stage, something happens: Susannah kisses Laura’s crush. Laura kisses Daniel. Susannah’s best […]

don’t understand how I don’t already have a review for this but okay

Paladin's Faith by T. Kingfisher

by 1 Comment

If you’re anything like me and already several books deep into The Saint of Steel and the entire world of the White Rat, you’re not here to decide whether or not to read this book—you’re here to bemoan the wait for the next one. This book offers all the reasons we’ve grown to love this world: precious paladins are once again utterly precious, all of them “good boys” (even the women) (good girls are a different breed). They’re tough but tender, deeply loyal, and need to be […]

Historical Fiction meets True Crime

The Mesmerist by Caroline Woods

by Leave a Comment

The Mesmerist by Caroline Woods is captivating historical fiction based on a real place in Minneapolis, The Bethany Home for Unwed Mothers, as well as on a true crime story that transpired in the area in 1894. The story revolves around three women. The mysterious Faith, a traumatized young woman who, judging by her dress, worked as a “sporting woman” in a brothel. She does not seem to speak, but she does come with a suspiciously large amount of money on her person. Abby Mendenhall, […]

“a hobbastyu was both a turbulent sea and a great difficulty, or dilemma”

Clear by Carys Davies

by 1 Comment

The idea of a historical fiction novel that sends you repeatedly running to Wikipedia usually sounds like a hefty tome, some kind of sweeping epic like Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries. But Carys Davies’s Clear is a tiny little jewel box of a novel, not even 200 pages long (or just a hair over three hours for the audiobook I listened to). But Davies takes you into the Scottish clearances, the 1843 schism in the Scottish Presbyterian church, Scots dialect, the dying Norse-derived languages of the northernmost […]

Greek gods + The Hunger Games, but so much worse

Blood of Hercules by Jasmine Mas

by 3 Comments

I am in a bit of a slump, and this seemed passably interesting. The cover is pretty and Hoopla tells me it’s popular? Set in the future, which, it must be said, sucks. Titans have emerged (from where?) to murder humanity, prompting Spartans (collective name for Greek Olympians) to reveal themselves after millennia in hiding in order to dispatch them. Spartans—you and I know them as Olympians-have their own internal conflict which forces the losing district (Chthonics) to serve as the Titan death squad. Anyway, […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo