Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Frantically trying to catch up

The midwinter mail-order bride by Kati Wilde

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It’s been a weird year.  I foolishly thought i would have a lot of reading time in January and February and then i got Covid.  I did read, but writing was a step too far.  Then i started a grad course in Internal audit and risk management.  Which has been interesting, but my final assessment is in, so in order to distract me from crippling anxiety about passing, i shall attempt to write some book reviews. I think i grabbed this book because a SBTB […]

“The mountain is there to be crossed.”

Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear

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This is third in the Maisie Dobbs series. It was my favorite so far, so I’m looking forward to continuing this series. In Pardonable Lies, Maisie is working on three separate cases: helping 14-year-old Avril Jarvis, who’s been accused of murdering her stepfather, finding out more about her friend Priscilla’s brother, who disappeared during World War I, and working for Sir Cecil Lawton, who promised his wife on her deathbed that he would search for their son, who was also reported dead during WWI. At the […]

No One to Really Root For but It’s Still Somehow Pretty Good

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

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She Who Became the Sun definitely lived up to the hype; the characters are interesting and complex, and there is plenty of action and plot. What bothered me was that there was really only one character who stood up for general human decency, not just “I must take charge of my destiny no matter what I have to do (including murdering innocent people and not so innocent people)”. The basic premise is pretty well known already: in a quasi historical early medieval China, a nameless […]

Chilled

Heated by Naima Simone

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I wasn’t ever able to really get into Naima Simone’s Heated. I’ve read and liked other Naima Simone books, so I can say it’s more a this one didn’t work for me than a there’s a problem with this book issue. Here is what I did like: Zora and her siblings run a business called Burned, Inc – Breaking Up, Reversing Nuptials & Evading Disasters. They will break up for you, get you out of an abusive relationship, or just one that you want finished […]

*Jaws Theme* dun dun dun dun

The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson

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I have an MFA in short fiction and don’t do a damn thing with it. But I love a good collection of short stories that teach me something about craft. Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery and Other Stories taught me the art of the ominous subtext. Jackson’s stories feature a lot of isolated or lonely people, who decidedly don’t get their happy endings. There is a dread running underneath (and sometimes overrneath…) her stories. Mundane details can say something about the character or the atmosphere. In […]

The Last Days of the Free Comanche

Ride the Wind by Lucia St. Clair Robson

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Captured in a raid, nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker is adopted by a Comanche couple and becomes integrated into the tribe, given the name Naduah, and eventually grows up to marry a Comanche chief. I love long lush historical fiction, especially older ones that lean more heavily into sprawling plots than most modern books. Ride the Wind delivered on all these fronts, and told a fascinating true story to boot. I enjoyed the style of writing, which was somewhat purple at times but created a vivid sense of […]



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