Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

He was cloaked in shadows, leaning against the wall, holding a beer by the neck. Her skin tingled.

Enemies to Lovers by Alisha Rai

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Sometimes the thing that speaks to me is so goofily specific I’m almost embarassed to admit what it is. I’m trying to be better about embracing my inner cringe, but also, I don’t think I’m wrong that this moment was the turning point. Sajal and Krish are on the run from one criminal organization and trying to find the head of another in Alisha Rai’s Enemies to Lovers. The sign that they are no longer enemies- she buys him a salad. She buys him a […]

Great Ending to the 1st Part of this series

The Power That Preserves by Stephen R. Donaldson

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God, I love this book. Endings are difficult as concluding a story in a manner that makes sense and is true to the characters you have been on a journey with is akin to landing a rocket on the moon. Donaldson pulled the feat off with this novel. The sequences where Covenant is being pulled into the Land are incredibly strong. The first attempt fails, not because the Lords of the Land were insufficient, but because when they were attempting to summon Covenant he was […]

Illearth War – book 2 of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant

The Illearth War by Stephen R Donaldson

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Donaldson really seems to find himself in this, the second book of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Covenant is still the weakest part of the book, along with the time spent in our world, but everything else is so vibrant. What I loved is how he took characters from the first book that were already interesting and provided even more background and context to them to make them fully 3 dimensional. Mhoram is a wonderful example of this. He played a key role in the […]

(Mostly) Horror Roundup

London Rules (Slough House #5) by Mick Herron

The Drift by CJ Tudor

The Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig

November (Darker Days) by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

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London Rules (Slough House #5, Mick Herron) *** I enjoy the Slough House books, but I never do know what to write about them. They’re well written and the plot is usually creative and unpredictable, but in spite of that (or perhaps because of that) it’s always the same: River fucks something up, Louisa is prickly, Shirley is aggressive, Diana Taverner is sneaky and antagonistic and Jackson Lamb is smarter than everyone else. There is enough intrigue to keep things interesting (and the Apple TV […]

“Remember, Vera reminds herself, your ass is bad. Very bad. And that is a good thing.”

Vera Wong's Guide to Snooping (On a Dead Man) - Vera Wong #2 by Jesse Q. Sutanto

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I often make mystery comparisons to one of the greats, Angela Lansbury’s Jessica Fletcher in Murder She Wrote. But it’s not a comparison I make lightly, because that show and character brings me ALL the joy, and so does this book. So, this is Jessica Fletcher, if she was a 60 year old Chinese tea shop owner in San Francisco who knows more and better than anyone else. Whereas Jessica is subtle, Vera is anything but. She is pushy, demanding, and downright insulting, but the found […]

The Obelisk Gate: Things get worse before they get better (I hope)

The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin

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Possible spoilers for The Fifth Season – Proceed with awareness. The Obelisk Gate is the second book in the Broken Earth Trilogy. In this installment, we follow two main stories – Essun and Nassun after each has arrived at a new, but separate, comm and the years that follow. Nassun is Essun’s daughter. Nassun had been taken by her father, Jija, after he murdered her little brother, Uche. We heard of them in the first book, but we officially meet them as they travel south […]



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