Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Let’s get out of here. You’re free from that waffletart now.

Hair and Heart: An MM Fairy Tale Romance by Rhys Everly

Pictures of You by Leta Blake

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Hair and Heart: An MM Fairy Tale Romance By Rhys Everly Val is in a conservatorship. He is a pop musician who has been under the care of his uncle since teenage Val blacked out during a psychotic episode and set fire to his home, which resulted in the death of both of his parents. Since that episode, he has been under his uncle Fred’s care. Val is in his early twenties and is tired of making the same generic pop ballads that made him […]

All I’ve wanted these past few days is to get as close to you as you’ve somehow gotten to me.

Take Me Home by Melanie Sweeney

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Melanie Sweeney’s Take Me Home is a wonderfully assured debut romance. There’s frenemies to lovers, a road trip, only one bed, a promise to not catch feelings if they just mess around over the holidays, and that emotional growth spurt that happens in your mid twenties. Hazel and Ash are such lovely characters to spend time with – funny, smart, generous, and doing their best to be good people. They are both adults, doing adult things, taking care of their adult lives, but kind of still […]

Remember and Be Nice

Remember by Dac Trung Tran

Troll by Frances Stickley

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Remember by Dac Trung Tran is due February  2025. I was able to locate an online reader copy. Now, I am not completely sure if I will find a finished copy early next year, but I do know I will be recommending it.  And that is despite, or because of, I am not completely sure what was read! I could tell you that it is about a book who wakes up to find his mother has left for work, and she has left him a […]

Pet a pooch, get a lick, smell a dog

The Smell of Wet Dog: And Other Dog Poems and Drawings by Barney Saltzberg

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Who likes the smell of wet dogs? Well, probably there are a few diehard canine lovers, but most of us? Nope. And that includes the narrator in the poem of the same named poem as the title of this collection, The Smell of Wet Dog: And Other Dog Poems and Drawings by Barney Saltzberg. But that does not mean there are not things they do love. And we see the things that are good (and other bad things) in the poems included in this due […]

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

Animal Farm by George Orwell

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In five words: masterpiece, Stalin, dystopia, idealism, satire I have reread Orwell’s 1984 more times than I can admit. I think it (and he) is what started my lifelong love of dystopian fiction. Even though Animal Farm is much shorter, and I’m sure I read it in high school (only because it lives on my bookshelves in the “stuff from high school” area) I didn’t remember much about it. My kiddo came home with it from 9th grade and I grabbed my copy, ready to […]

An Impressive Heroine, All the More So Seeing As She Is Still in Middle School

We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker

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In a small town along the cliffs of northern California, a young girl has disappeared.  Walk and his best friend, Vincent, are both teens and join in the search.  Walk wants to join the police force, like his dad, and when the girl’s body is found along the roadside, he forces himself to give evidence that implicates Vincent.  Vincent ends up in prison and after killing a man in a prison fight, ends up there for thirty years.  Walk does what he can to stay […]



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