Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The woods will trick you.

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

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I read and enjoyed The Unseen World a few years ago, and then sort of stopped paying attention to Liz Moore until someone at work mentioned that she was reading God of the Woods and I was like “Liz Moore, sounds familiar??” I was delighted to 1. remember how much I enjoyed The Unseen World, and 2. discover new books from Liz Moore! Wow! I generally do not like “coming of age” books because I am grumpy and I think few people write about that […]

“Heroism is often the seemingly spontaneous result of a lifetime of preparation.”

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

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Bingo: I am counting this book for the “Green” square. Tress is a simple window washer who lives on a rock in the middle of an ocean of deadly spores. She is content baking culinary masterpieces, adding to her cup collection and spending time with her best friend Charlie. When Charlie is captured by the Sorceress across the Midnight Sea. In order to rescue the man she loves, Tress must leave her quiet life behind for one of adventure and peril. As she journeys across […]

Major Tom? Can You Hear Me?

Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli

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cbr17 bingo Migrant   Like the title says, an archive, a family one, loaded into boxes and carried across country from New York to Arizona.  The family is a hybrid one – the husband with his son and the wife with her daughter, yet the two children are a team.  Good thing they have each other to rely on.  The parents met as part of a project to document the soundscape of New York City, but when the wife meets the mother of a classmate […]

Twee But Bearable Until a Gross Joke

XOXO by Kathryn R. Biel

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I didn’t go into XOXO with the highest of expectations, but I did go in with some. I expected a meet-cute, a marriage of convenience, a slow burn, and a satisfying conclusion to the story. And XOXO provides that, kind of. Ophelia is what you’d call a true romantic. Loves all the rom coms, believes in big, heart-felt gestures, and is sure that her long-distance boyfriend Trevor is the one for her. So what if he’s in Baltimore and she’s in Boston? They’re meant to […]

“But not everyone has dreams. Some people just are, the way that trees and rocks and rivers are just there without a reason, the rest of the world moving around them.”

Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker

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CBR17 Bingo: Citizen – Though Cora is a citizen of the United States, her race – as well as the race of the many murdered Asian women in this book – makes everyone around them perceive them as foreigners to the point that they are stripped of the safety that their citizenships were supposed to have given them. Cora works as a crime scene cleaner during the COVID-19 pandemic – after witnessing her sister pushed in front of a train, the gore doesn’t bother her anymore. […]

Sapphic golem fantasy debut

The Maiden and Her Monster by Maddie Martinez

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The Maiden and Her Monster fulfills the “diaspora” square for CBR17 Bingo. As soon as I learned of The Maiden and Her Monster, I knew I needed to read it. I love explorations of Jewish experiences and especially love different ways the golem story can be reimagined. Set in a Medieval Prague inspired setting, The Maiden and Her Monster follows Malka as she ventures into a cursed forest that has been killing the girls of her village so she can free her imma from the Church’s idea […]



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