Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Their mistake was believing they were the scary people in the room.”

The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne by Ron Currie

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This quickest and most accurate review that I can give of The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne is this: The book reads like a strong season of the Fargo TV series on FX. If you like Fargo,  you’ll like this book. If you don’t, you won’t. What’s like Fargo in the book? First, the tone. The reader will enjoy a counterintuitively pleasing gumbo of tension, laugh-out-loud humor, sharp truth telling, sadness, and mystery. Second, the compelling characters. Ron Currie’s titular Babs Dionne is the […]

No one has enemies

Vinland Saga by Makoto Yukimura

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CBR18 Bingo – Versus: it’s literally about Vikings. My tolerance for real violence is much lower than my tolerance for fictional violence. So when I read fictionalized versions of real war, I bounce between “cool battle!” and “I hate that this happened.” Makoto Yukimura’s Vinland Saga heavily leans toward the “I hate that this happened” reaction because the battles aren’t cool. They’re just violent and sad. Thorfinn is a Viking boy in Iceland. He has a happy life that’s full of sheep and stories from […]

Come for the cover, stay for the history lesson

Armaveni by Nadine Takvorian

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CBR18 Bingo – Bird: a history teacher who deserves to be given one. And the phoenix and crane gave me enough words to review this book. But mostly the teacher. Armaveni is about Nadine finding her family’s history. It’s based on the author Nadine Takvorian’s own life and the author notes what she changed for the narrative. Most of that was temporally condensing her experiences and making herself younger than she really was when she experienced them. Nadine is an Armenian-American girl in high school. […]

A promising start to a new series

Witch Season by Julia Bianco

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CBR18 Bingo: Refuge (The Aestas coven works hard to be a safe haven and refuge for young witches who have snapped and would normally be ostracised by other witches) Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for this ARC. This book is on sale now. There are two types of witches (in this world, all magic users are called witches, regardless of gender). The ones who are born from families with established magic, who grew up as part of a coven, and who are […]

Yabba Dabba Ghost

Diary of a Dinoghost V01Unlikely Friends by Monica Arnaldo

Diary of a Dinoghost V02 Sworn Enemies by Monica Arnaldo

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I had a list of online reader copies. And Diary of a Dinoghost boos …   I mean books … one and two kept coming up. I figured I had a few days to read them as the first Unlikely Friends was due in August 2026 and two is due in November 2026 under the name, Sworn Enemies. They are both written and illustrated by Monica Arnaldo and are part of the A Branches Book grouping. Anyway, I kept putting them off, but one day […]

Fairy Tale Group Therapy

How to Be Eaten by Maria Adelmann

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Ok this might be my favorite read of the year. How to Be Eaten by Maria Adelmann is about a group of women who receive a mysterious email inviting them to take part in a group therapy session specifically focused on women who have been through a very public trauma. Each of the women, it turns out, are characters from our most famous fairy tales, with a modern twist. Bernice found out her blue-obsessed tech billionaire boyfriend is a serial killer, Ruby survived a wolf […]



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