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.

 

Rage against the dying of the light

Men Have Called Her Crazy (2024) by Anna Marie Tendler

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Bingo square rage. I think this completes my bingo row, along with fanfic, fiasco, earth day, golden Content note for the book: suicidal ideation, eating disorders, self harm, mental health “Now I’m furious, so angry my whole body feels hot, and I can tell I’m about to cry.” (p. 211) I’m (still) a fan of Tendler’s ex-husband–and I love that this isn’t about him. Well, it’s about him in the sense that he’s the ‘unfaithful husband’ of the narrative, presumably, the shadow that lurks behind […]

Honestly incredible… I’m at a loss for words.

All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir

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CBR 16 Bingo – Rage: …It’s in the title. No explanation required. This book, told through 3 perspectives, one from the past and 2 in the present. In the past, in Lahore, Pakistan, Misbah is newly married to Tofiq in an arranged marriage. They end up coming to the United States hoping for a new start and end up opening the Cloud’s Rest Inn Motel. In the present, Salahudin (Misbah’s son, nicknamed Sal) and his best friend Noor were so close they were like family, […]

The Navajo Lens

Shutter by Ramona Emerson

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I have always pursued good character-driven crime fiction. Yes, plotting is important and necessary to a good story but as I’ve said many times, I need a reason to care about what’s going on. The less I care about the characters, the less I’ll care about what’s going down. This is why whodunits rarely do it for me: they’re too focused on the mystery to make me care about who killed who. Shutter is not a tightly-plotted novel and that might bother some readers but I was so […]

How Many Lies, How Many Truths

The Truth According to Ember by Danica Nava

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The Truth According to Ember ended up on my reading list because of social media. When the ARC was released author and reviewer folks who I follow were promoting it because they liked what they were reading, but also it is a romance by and about Native people published by a mainstream publishing house (in this case, Berkley). While I didn’t receive an ARC, I was interested enough to keep an eye out for publication, and once that happened, I immediately placed myself on the […]

“All I’ve ever tried to do is the right thing. If that’s so very different from how things have been done before, then what’s done before was wrong.”

To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose

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CBR16 Bingo: Smash – This book combines elements of fantasy (dragons) and science fiction (steampunk). The cultures depicted also smash and clash together throughout the book. All Anequs wants to do is live in peace with her tribe, content to be ignored by the Anglish conquerers who’ve taken over most of the continent. However, when she bonds with the first dragon to hatch on their island in generations, she must attend their academy and adapt to their ways if she hopes to keep her dragon. This […]

For what was earth but a mirror of heaven? And what was she but a thing caught in between?

Mirrored Heavens by Rebecca Roanhorse

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The first two books in Rebecca Roanhorse’s Between Earth and Sky series, Black Sun and Fevered Star, are two of my favorite books of the last five years. I’ve proselytized these books so many times, and now, at last, I can tell people the end is worth it. Mirrored Heavens is a tense read. There were many points where I had to put my tablet down and pace in circles because otherwise I would scream just to relieve the pressure. This is exactly the kind of […]



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