Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

As your best friend and life support system, I require you to be less stupid.

Moss’d in Space by Rebecca Thorne

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Well this was delightful! I knew that I would enjoy Rebecca Thorne’s Moss’d in Space, narrated by Natalie Naudus and Dylan Reilly Fitzpatrick, but I was still surprised by how much. I liked Thorne’s Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea, though I thought it rambled a bit. Moss’d has the growing found family and community building of Treason, but it’s a much tighter story. I enjoyed every moment of it. In the far future, human live mostly on space stations and one planet (not Earth). Citizenship on the planet […]

It’s all fun and games until the gods show up

All Hail Chaos: Time of Iron Book 2 by Sarah Rees Brennan

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All Hail Chaos is the sequel to Long Live Evil, which I reviewed favorably last year. At the time, I thought this sequel would end the story, but it looks like we are in for a Time of Iron Book 3, and there is a doozy of a cliffhanger at the end of book 2. My overall impression of All Hail Chaos is that it was … fine. Honestly, I felt like the pacing was kind of slow, and some of the more interesting character […]

The Father Who Stepped Up, Then Stepped Aside

Whistler by Ann Patchett

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Daphne Fuller, the protagonist of Ann Patchett’s newest novel is a fifty-three old English teacher at an all-girls private school. On a day trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art with her older, retired husband, she runs into someone she hasn’t seen in over forty years: her former stepfather Eddie Triplett. They begin spending time together and it helps Daphne fill in some of the blanks from her childhood that have been puzzling her for years. You see, Daphne has never fully understood the story […]

Do you know the Muffin Man? Well it won’t matter after Godzilla gets done with the fairy tale village!

Godzilla Stomp! by Katherine Locke and Nikolas Ilic

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Now, I’m that person that roots for the bull instead of the cowboy in bull riding. I love watching the golf ball spin aaaroooound the hole and not go in. I will cheer for the curling kettle to “go go go! Aaaand out of bounds!”  So it should come as no surprise that I will have a hearty hurrah when it comes to movie monsters. And I have a soft spot for Godzilla. But not in Godzilla Stomp! by Katherine Locke. You see, Locke’s Godzilla […]

The Stepford Pioneer

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

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Yesteryear is the debut novel of Caro Claire Burke, and is centred on a delightfully fiendish “what if”. What if a popular American tradwife influencer one day found herself living in actual pioneer times? Such a simple conceit, and yet so thoroughly engaging. So it pains me to say: this book completely squanders its brilliant premise. I really loved the setup, following Natalie, a woman pretending to be the perfect housewife while hiding nannies, microwaves, pesticides and farmhands juuuust out of frame. I should have […]

“What is a river but an open throat; what is water but a voice?”

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

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“The River Liss runs north to south, and its waters brim with grammar.” What an absolutely musical opening sentence. I had to stop and reread it several times just to let it sink in. Amal El-Mohtar’s writing hugs the line between poetry and prose, and results in a truly delicious reading experience. This novella, based on the English ballad “The Bonny Swans,” tells the story of two sisters, Esther and Ysabel. Their family tends the willow trees that grow along the magical river Liss, and […]



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