Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Beauty and the Beast meets Groundhog Day, but with more murder

A Curse So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer

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A very long time ago, Prince Rhen, the crown prince of Emberfall, made a very foolish mistake and slept with the wrong woman. He’s been paying for said mistake for centuries. Forced to relive the autumn of his eighteenth year over and over, he has to get a woman to fall in love with him in a few months, or he turns into a murderous beast and slaughters anyone he can find. If the curse remains unbroken, the season resets and Rhen is back on […]

A cute fairy tale retelling

By the Book by Jasmine Guillory

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3.5 stars Isabelle (her friends call her Izzy) was so elated when she got a job as an assistant editor for a big publishing company. It was like a dream come true. Several years later, when she’s overworked, underappreciated and still living with her parents at twenty-five, without even getting a promotion, she is starting to wonder if she should change careers. After having her own attempts at writing a book politely criticised by one of her more senior colleagues, that’s another dream she’s shelved, […]

Beauty and the Beast with no Stockholm syndrome and more magic

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

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In 2020 I read Naomi Novik’s, Spinning Silver, which I found to be an excellent reimaging of Rumpelstiltskin.  I finished the review with,  “Uprooted is going on my “wish list”.  Between then and now I got Uprooted in a Cannonball fundraiser but it has sat on the shelf.  I had this slated for the “Bird” square in Cannonball Bingo because of the bird on the cover.  However, I ran out of time and used Transmetropolitan volume 2: Lust for Life instead. I’ve long been a fan of […]

Sort of sexy, not really addictive

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

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I’ve come to realize that most of my reviews start with “this book is a best-seller” or “this book was on a top fantasy/YA/scifi list” etc… The words that kept coming up for this series were sexy and addictive. Yes, and yes. So I went ahead and bought the four book series knowing that if it really was as addictive as everyone said it was, I would plow through the entire series in a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, I got bored with book one and […]

Beauty and the Beast, Now with 100% Less Stockholm

Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase

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I’ll say that this is probably more of a 2.5 book that I am rounding up because I liked it but also kept wincing until near to the end (if not the end), which is not a reaction I want to have with these types of books. I believe this was a Beauty and the Beast retelling I stumbled upon after reading When Beauty Tamed the Beast and deciding that this would be a vein I’d pursue in some more detail. If it weren’t for the fact […]

How many Beauty and the Beast retellings can I get through? Many

When Beauty Tamed the Beast by Eloisa James

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I enjoy these fairy tale retellings quite a bit! There’s something very Georgette Heyer about the way that Eloisa James writes dialogue, in the exact vein of my favorite works of hers (The Grand Sophy*, Cotillion). All heroines are sparkling wits (and may or may not be beauties) who clash verbal swords with broody male leads and/or secondary characters (conservative ladies who hold the keys to Almack’s, clearly unsuited secondary male leads). Not everything is the same, of course–both of these novels take place in foreboding castles far […]



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