Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


less compelling second adventure with our sister hellraisers

The Ladies Road Guide to Utter Ruin by Alison Goodman

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I’ll give this three stars even though there were multiple instances along the way when I was getting grumpy and wanted to give it two–namely because I did sit down and keep reading it, because I wanted to know what was going to happen to our band of motley characters. The biggest issue I had with this book was repeated quite consistently. Namely, that there were these highly complicated build ups to conflicts and/or quests, all of which were summarily dispatched so easily that you […]

“I was, to him, a competent and required presence. Not a worthless, overbearing spinster or deficient female. Was this how men felt all the time? This intrinsic acceptance of one’s significance? No wonder they walked through life expecting so much as their due.” CBRBINGO – Family

The Ladies Road Guide to Utter Ruin (The Ill-Mannered Ladies, #2) by Alison Goodman

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This one got a bit complicated, but I still had a great time. The plot is going in a direction I definitely did not expect, I hope it gets back to them helping Regency ladies in need after the next book. (I hope there is more than three!) The premise of The Ill-Mannered Ladies books is that because our two main characters, Gus and Julia, have the gift of independent wealth, and the questionable blessing of being constantly overlooked and underestimated due to their genders […]

The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies

The Benevolent Society of Ill Mannered Ladies by Alison Goodman

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I randomly picked this up, when not feeling my best and wanted an easy romance novel to enjoy. Now I’m happy this is actually the first in a series, and I can’t wait for the second installement. The leads (2 sisters) are charming and their adventures are very effective. They actually had me google things to make sure that they were historically accurate. And they were. I could easily envision this being a TV series, it’s almost written in teh same way, and their episodic […]

Crime, suspense and romance in Regency England

The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies (The Ill-Mannered Ladies Book 1) by Alison Goodman

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Shoutout to Narfna for bringing this book to my attention! This was a very entertaining novel that contains three exciting adventures featuring a highly unusual woman in Regency England. Lady Augusta Colebrook is forty-something, single, and a member of the noble class. She and her fraternal twin sister Lady Julia are well connected and well liked in London society, but then again very few people know about their private activities. When we meet Augusta (Gus) and Julia, they are attempting to help a married friend […]

“We shall be useful. But just as importantly we shall be defiant, occasionally ill-mannered, and completely indomitable.”

The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies by Alison Goodman

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The historical detail of this book was incredibly pleasing (the afterword notes that she submitted 2/3 of it as her dissertation for her PhD!) and I am definitely in for reading more from this series. My favorite thing from this author that I’ve read by quite a large margin. I was pretty sure going in that this was a romance, because of the cover and the ladies in dresses, but like the cover (which hides its weapons amidst the folds of a dress) this book […]

If Georgette Heyer wrote fantasy

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A fantastic blending of genres, The Dark Days Club takes a classic Regency set-up, romantic tension, and adds a terrifying fantasy layer, creating something that feels organic and real and wonderful. The Regency world of this novel is perfect, featuring the real life people that so often showed up in Georgette Heyer’s novels (Lady Jersey, the prince regent, Beau) and all of the dances and morning calls and promenades, making this fantasy novel feel grounded even when the supernatural elements are introduced. It started out […]



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