Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

“You built a nice adulthood over the ruins of a shitty adolescence, my therapist once said.”

Problematic Summer Romance by Ali Hazelwood

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Nowhere Book Bingo 2025: A book set on vacation   Official plot summary (because it’s better than anything I could come up with): Maya Killgore is twenty-three and still in the process of figuring out her life.   Conor Harkness is thirty-eight, and Maya cannot stop thinking about him.   It’s such a cliché, it almost makes her heart implode: older man and younger woman; successful biotech guy and struggling grad student; brother’s best friend and the girl he never even knew existed. As Conor […]

Not the kind of in-depth I was looking for

Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood

A Game of Lies by Clare Mackintosh

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Not in Love (Ali Hazelwood) *** Rue Siebert is a scientist who loves her work. She spends her days at a tech company trying to improve the shelf life of perishables; as a child who dealt with a lot of food insecurity, it is personally important to her. It also provides her with financial stability and her best friend works there too. But then a hostile takeover occurs, and Rue is very surprised to see the man leading the takeover is Eli Killgore – the […]

Swimming, Stanford, and sex

Deep End by Ali Hazelwood

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Ali Hazelwood is churning out her feminist STEM romance novels so fast, that I’m barely keeping up. As soon as I discover another one is out, then I join the long waitlist at the library. Deep End (2025) did not disappoint. I loved that the book took place at Stanford with student athletes. I thought the story was interesting, and the chemistry between the leads was great. Was it a perfect book? No, but I enjoyed reading it and would give it four out of five stars. […]

Problematic for sure

Problematic Summer Romance by Ali Hazelwood

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Not in Love is probably my favourite of Ali Hazelwood’s so far, so I wanted to read the follow-up with some of the same characters, Problematic Summer Romance. Set during Eli and Rue’s (from Not in Love) wedding in Italy, Eli’s little sister and his best friend deal with their feelings for each other, despite the wide difference in their age. Like all of Hazelwood’s books that I’ve read so far, it’s well-written, there’s some moments that are genuinely funny, and I liked the side […]

Another female scientist finds her happily ever after

Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood

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Ali Hazelwood is an automatic read for me now. I always enjoy reading her books, even when the characters drive me crazy. This is because they are likeable and funny–but in order to make the story work, they can be insanely obtuse when it comes to love. Apparently, I was a little obtuse because I only recently realized that Hazelwood had two new books out. I picked up Not in Love (2024) first, which centers around Rue. Rue is a little atypical. She only has a couple of friends, […]

Let’s Get Physical

Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

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Elsie is a theoretical physicist, stuck in a dead-end job she hates – teaching ungrateful students who keep emailing her day and night with excuses as to why they can’t meet their deadlines – while barely making ends meet. To get by, she works as a fake girlfriend for a company called Faux: men who are tired of their family members asking them when they’re going to find a girl, or men who need a plus-one for a corporate dinner, hire Elsie for the night. […]



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