Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Full Cannonball, Total Banger

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

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Alright, maybe not a total banger – more like a satisfyingly slow burn – but I wanted to finish my Cannonball Read with something I’ve wanted to read for a while and it ended up being this. I was planning on reading it someday, so when I came across a copy in at a thrift store (cost me about three bucks in conjunction with The Little Friend) I figured fate was trying to tell me something.  I was working as a lowly book shop employee […]

Love is both a constant and a variable

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

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I wish I had waited just a day to write my best-of list, because I would absolutely add this book. I loved being in this world, with these characters. Sam and Sadie meet when they are young, in a children’s hospital, in the 1980s – the time of The Oregon Trail (among other games). Sam is a patient, recovering from a terrible car accident that will have life-long repercussions for his feet (not to mention his mental state). Sadie’s older sister Alice has cancer (a […]

This House is Not a Home

The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas

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Mexican Gothic meets Crimson Peak is the way I would describe this novel, although some reviews have compared it to Rebecca, a book I have not read. Set during the years following the Mexican War of Independence, the story follows Beatriz, a young woman who has recently married into the wealthy Solórzano family after a whirlwind courtship from the heir patron of San Isidro, Rodolfo. Although she barely knows him, Beatriz agreed to marry him as a way to raise her status as a mixed […]

Deck the Halls

The Christmas Party by Karen Swan

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On a cold winter night on Ireland’s west coast, Declan Lorne, the last Lord of Ireland, throws a lavish party at his magnificent castle. The location is wonderful, the guests are old friends who all know each other, the atmosphere is great. But before the night is out he dies, leaving behind his bereft wife, three twentysomething daughters and a dilapidated estate with no money to fix it. The next unpleasant surprise comes when his will is read: he leaves the estate not to his […]

Grow where you’re planted (and support local!)

Food Artisans of Alberta by Karen Anderson

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I read this in slow 10 page increments each morning over a period of a few months, and it was a soul-satisfying read with my morning coffee. Karen Anderson is a former nurse with a passion for slow and local food, as well as Alberta history. She is attempting to create a culinary scene in the province that extends beyond the major cities (she was running food tours in the major cities), and this book is a step towards that goal, as well as trying […]

Harry Potter in the upside down

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

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I really wanted to love this but ended this more meh. It’s definitely trying to channel later instalment Harry Potter, but with more diversity and less heartwarming-ness. Our protagonist is El, short for Galadriel, who is in her next to last year school at the Scholomance, an international wizard high school. Unlike Hogwarts, the Scholomance is self- taught (no Dumbledores or Snapes) and brimming with danger day to day, mostly in the form of magical monsters (Mals, short for maleficaria). In this world, the surges […]



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