Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Well-Crafted but Emotionally Distant

Passing by Nella Larsen

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Passing is about Irene and Clare, two light-skinned Black women who are both capable of passing as White. Irene only does so when it’s convenient, like getting into a fancy hotel, but Clare is fully immersed in her life as the wife of a racist White man who does not know that Clare is biracial. The two women were childhood friends, but in her late teens, Clare disappears from the neighborhood, and the novel begins when the two incidentally cross paths 12 years later. It’s a […]

Keep the change

Fool’s Fate: The Tawny Man Trilogy Book 3 by Robin Hobb

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I am completely satisfied with the end of this trilogy but sad nonetheless that it is over. In Fool’s Fate, we pick up with Prince Dutiful and his coteries of Skill users and of “Old Blood” witted folk as they set sail on the Prince’s quest. In order to win the hand of the Narcheska of the Narwhal clan, Elliania, Dutiful has made an oath before his nobles and the representatives of the Outislander clans that he will deliver to the Narwhal clan the head […]

If the gimmick of the octopus was removed, would I still like this book? Hmmmm

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

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  Books with quirky narrators are always a risk going into them. Some are great; The curious incident of the dog in the night-time offered a fresh perspective, The Book Thief was better for its narrator; while others like The seven moons of Maali Almeida left me a little cold. This one sits somewhere between the two ends. Ostensibly the story of Marcellus the Octopus coming to the end of his life in captivity, he serves more as a framing device for Tova and Cameron’s lives coming […]

And then the nights came on and the frosts took hold again, and blades of cold slid under doors and cut the knees off those who still knelt to say the rosary.

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

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As they carried along and met more people Furlong did and did not know, he found himself asking was there any point in being alive without helping one another? Was it possible to carry on along through all the years, the decades, through an entire life, without once being brave enough to go against what was there and yet call yourself a Christian, and face yourself in the mirror? ― Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These “What it is to be a man,” she said, […]

Enviormental fun

Luz Goes Green V01 Luz Sees the Light by Claudia Dávila

Luz Goes Green V02 Luz Makes a Splash by Claudia Dávila

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Unknowingly I read the Luz Goes Green series backwards. Or I read Luz Makes a Splash (Luz Goes Green, 2) by Claudia Davila before Luz Sees the Light (book one). That did not take away from the fact that I loved this book. Honestly this is probably the closest five I have read in awhile. Sure, there was one small bump, but that is forgivable. That bump was because the online reader I was reading didn’t have a lot of color. I would have loved […]

left me a bit cold despite the emotional content

Heart the Lover by Lily King

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Pushing down the original first paragraph a bit given the spoiler-y nature of it. We know from the blurb that something happens and our main trio of characters separate, so it’s not entirely spoiler, but it’s still details that might impede your enjoyment. Or maybe not! This book, more than anything else, is about our main character, mostly unnamed, the titular Heart the Lover–King asks the question, what if you had a true love (lost) but also a facility with language? Could you process and […]



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