Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“So she’s a mystic autistic?”

Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan

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That title is the question my fiancee posed to me when I ranted to her about this book. Honestly, I’d say she’s not necessarily wrong. Although Willow is never confirmed to be autistic, probably in large part due to her family situation being so everchanging and her school counselor being an abject failure, she clearly is, and the book seems to just be her, through some voodoo magic, causing drastic shifts in the lives of everybody she comes into contact with. Like she just exists […]

“My dear chap, this is a bookshop. There’s never anywhere better to be.”

Slippery Creatures by K.J. Charles

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CBR14 Bingo: Snake (SPOILER: being a thoroughly disreputable sort, Kim also turns out to betray Will at least once during the story) Will Darling has inherited his late uncle’s bookshop and is grateful for the fact. After serving in World War I, most of his skills involve killing swiftly and efficiently, not really a commodity on the post-war job markets back in England. Now he just needs to get some idea of all the books actually in the shop and get on with being a […]

‘The ocean was exactly as she’d imagined it’

Summer Sisters (1998) by Judy Blume

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CBR14 BINGO square: Shadow. (Holiday would be too easy.) Judy Blume’s Summer Sisters (1998) is a mood, a vibe, an energy, rather than a novel. It’s the salty taste of chips (or fries) and the soft sweetness of ice cream and the sharp chill of a vodka and cranberry with ice. It’s a long slow afternoon by the shore, a long slow stare into the shadows of the past. It’s strawberry lipgloss and windblown hair and new yellow swimsuits and singing along to ABBA and holding […]

So are you glad I plunged in after you now?

A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske

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CBR14 BINGO: Camel/Adapt Square (Adapting to a family chock full of magic when you only have a drop/Adapting to a new job and a whole magical world you did not know existed. A whole lot of adapting going on.) Witty banter, slow burning spiciness and magic make for a great little book. Edwin, a member of a powerful magical family, is the runt of his lineage. Born with just a little spark of magic, Edwin makes do as a liaison between the British government and magical […]

…you don’t have to be single to be independent. And you don’t have to be married to be loved.

Flying Solo by Linda Holmes

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CBR14 BINGO: Cozy Square (I slated this one for the New Square, but when I thought about how reading this book made me feel, Cozy hit the spot. Also, it includes a cozy little mystery.) I read and really enjoyed Holmes’ debut novel Evvie Drake Starts Over. I appreciated the small town, Bull Durham-y, messy but realistic romance of it all. This novel takes place in the same Maine town and references a handful of characters from her debut novel. It’s not necessary to read the first book […]

…they’ll eat us if we’re convenient.

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

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CBR14BINGO: Monster Square (Kaiju=monster for the most part but a handful of monstrous people involved as well. This would have never been something that I would have picked up but when Cannonballers recommend, you listen. Perhaps I should have used the Rec’d square for this one, but Monster is too perfect.) A recently downsized tech worker, Jamie, starts delivering app-ordered food during the Covid pandemic. When the delivery is to someone that Jamie talked to once a party in college, a whole new world literally opens […]



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