Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I just can’t with this book

The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison

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Reasons why this book grated on me (mild spoilers but I don’t care, you shouldn’t read it anyway): Copious boob descriptions. Behold: The twin peaks that strain against the middle buttons of her blouse Her soaked T-shirt leaving her as good as naked from the waist up.  But even though her breasts were resplendent – small but perfect, with nipples standing up like finials in the pelting rain… The nipples inert in the heat of the day The way she let it all hang out […]

“something beautiful left town, and she never even knew its name”

Again, Rachel (2022) by Marian Keyes

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I haven’t been very well in the last couple of months–various new aches and pains and discomforts and a couple of random fevers; tests and scans come back OK for now; lots of “could be stress, could be anything” and late night browsing what “anything” might be (which is a bad thing to do, don’t do this). So I sought something chill to read (I’m about of a 10th of the way through Emily M. Danforth’s Plain Bad Heroines (2020) which is brilliant and tangled […]

One of Lau’s more forgettable novels

He's Not My Boyfriend by Jackie Lau

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Annoyed by family meddling, Iris tries to ignore her growing attraction to hot one-night-stand Alex Iris Chin is happily single and doesn’t ever want to enter into a long-term relationship, certainly not marriage. She can’t understand why her mother and grandmother are so eager to set her up, both seem to have made very poor choices in their own marriages. One-night-stands feel much more uncomplicated to Iris, but once it turns out that one of her previous hook-ups, Alex Kwong, works on the construction site […]

A very lovely romance about two complex people on the search for belonging

Georgie, All Along by Kate Clayborn

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4.5 stars 15-word review: Trying to get some direction in her life, Georgie turns to a new-found teenage journal Longer review: Georgie is feeling adrift. She’s worked as a personal assistant for a number of industry people in L.A, and was really good at it. Now, however, her former boss decided to retire to the countryside and doesn’t need a P.A. anymore. Georgie is free to go home to her family to realise her own dreams, the only problem is, she has no idea what […]

A Russia I Never Knew

The Witch and the Tsar by Olesya Salnikova Gilmore

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I believe there is a certain amount of fate and luck when it comes to reading. Picking up the right book at the right time is crucial for a mood reader and there have been many times when I found a book I wanted to read but just couldn’t slide into for whatever reason. Sometimes I’m able to set it aside and come back, sometimes they never get their time to shine. Luckily, this book and I finally clicked on the third attempt and I’m […]

“The world was filling with ghosts. We were a haunted country in a haunted world.”

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

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This is a book I wouldn’t have picked up if not for one of my book clubs, and this is exactly why book clubs and stuff that makes you read outside your comfort zone are so fun. This book was so good! A real treat for book-lovers, and for humans who lived through (are living through?) the COVID-19 pandemic. I didn’t get excited about this one until somebody told me it was about a woman who is haunted by her least favorite bookshop customer, who […]



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