Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Push their faces together and make them kiss already

Assistant to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

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When her gaze finally reached his face, she had to swallow a sigh and bury it where nobody would ever find it. But how could she help it? His jaw was sharp and angled enough that it could be a weapon itself, strong enough to make her insides quiver. Don’t let him quiver your insides, Evie. ― Hannah Nicole Maehrer, Assistant to the Villain When she cannot find a job, Evie stumbles into the new role of the assistant to The Villain. Not “a” villain […]

“Zahra and I were complete; we were the sun and the wind, the sky and the earth, life and death, above the world and untouchable.”

The Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee

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I was a big fan of Fonda Lee’s Green Bone Saga, so when I stumbled on this novella, I was thrilled! In the sprawling Green Bone Saga, Lee crafted a dynasty in which 10s of key actors loved and hated and fought and died over several countries and thousands of pages. In The Untethered Sky, Lee narrows the scope to a single girl and her bird – well, never her bird, but the bird that she tends. I didn’t read the blurb on this book, […]

Campsite Reads

The Alewives by Elizabeth R. Andersen

Lock Every Door by Riley Sager

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We took a brief holiday over the Ascension Day weekend, and because my kids didn’t really want to leave the campsite I got the chance to catch up on my reading. I finished three books. The third one deserves its own review, but I grouped the other two together. The Alewives (Elizabeth R. Anderson) **  In the Middle Ages, in the tannery district of the Alsation town of Colmar, four women team up to brew ale, bemoan their useless and/or dead husbands, and solve crimes. […]

Matters of Inheritance and Love on the Brink of Waterloo

Deserted by Mary Lancaster

Beloved by Mary Lancaster

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Deserted – 4 stars Sophia thinks she’s escaped the clutches of her tyrannical cousins when she comes to be companion to the Duchess of Cuttyngham, even if it’s under strange circumstances. But when her employer makes her escape to Brussels and her family pursues her to her new home, Sophia is forced to turn to the icy but beguiling Earl of Frostbrook for help. This is the third book in The Duel series, which follows the fallout of the Duke of Cuttyngham’s death in a […]

A Blast from the Past

The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft

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I first read Lovecraft as a teen and was instantly smitten.  The Rats in the Wall?  OMG!  So creepy!  So it’s fun, lo these many years later, to read Lovecraft again, seeing a little more behind the curtain, as it were. But I was amused to find the setting of most of these sinister tales in this collection were in obscure bits of the mid-Atlantic states (not the standard setting of gothic tales of horror) such as upstate New York.  OK, I’ll give you Rip […]

“What I did know was that I had hit upon a truth of womanhood; however blameless a life we led, the passions and the greed of men could bring us to ruin, and there was nothing we could do.”

Ariadne by Jennifer Saint

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I’ve had a run of bad luck the past few years where the first book I pick to read ends up, at worst, pretty terrible, and at best, readable but not enjoyable. Unfortunately, Ariadne by Jennifer Saint falls into the latter. Since I spent a lot of 2023 reading and rereading Greek Mythological retellings (thank you Natalie Haynes and Madeline Miller among others), I honestly thought this would be a shoo-in as an easy read, my return to CBR, and jump starting my reading for […]



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