Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Harlot’s Bay: A bit hit and miss

At First Spite by Olivia Dade

Second Chance Romance by Olivia Dade

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CBR Bingo: Season – Second Chance Romance is set in autumn, and we see the characters dressing for the season on at least one of their dates. I really like (most of) Olivia Dade’s Spoiler Alert series, so I decided to give her other work a try. I ended up DNFing At First Spite, but did finish Second Chance Romance even if I was a bit unenthusiastic about it. At First Spite Even from the beginning, I didn’t love this one. The premise is that the […]

historical fiction that was a bit too much fiction for me

The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray

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CBR Bingo: wealth, because this entire book is a monument to the wealth of J.P. Morgan A book suggested for IRL Book Group! This is a work of historical fiction, about the woman hired by JP Morgan to build out the collection of the Morgan Library. Belle da Costa Greene was a white-passing Black woman, who remained JP Morgan’s personal “librarian” until he died, never marrying but responsible for the accumulation of millions of dollars of rare manuscripts. And when I say millions of dollars, […]

the book that snapped me out of my funk

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

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CBR Bingo: Bird, because this has birds on the cover (that counts, right?) hot take: This book grows up and becomes Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. longer take: so that’s the wrong title entirely and the wrong book, and now I’ve read the Wikipedia summary for said book I’m not going to go read it. Whoops all around. The book I was actually thinking about is Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, which is also about a slightly unpleasant older woman who’s reckoning with her past and how it’s impacted […]

very very belated ARC review :(

Pride & Provocateur: A Modern Pride and Prejudice Variation in Dildo, Newfoundland by Melissa Yi

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CBR Bingo: Friends, obviously, as the Bennet family here are a found family Hi to fellow Cannonballer Melissa Yi! I’m a strident P&P fangirl, and have rather warm feelings to all of the various adaptations that I’ve encountered along the way. I also have strong opinions about what makes for a good adaptation, because I think people misunderstand the key elements of a P&P vs a story with P&P beats. One thing I think Yi gets absolutely right is that the Bennet sisters don’t actually […]

and now, for something slightly different

Change Your Win Conditions by Vee (Vera_DragonMuse)

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Bingo: 26, as this fic was started right at the start of 2026! I am way behind in my reading for this year, and it’s obviously because I have spent many hours consuming many hundreds of thousands of words of Heated Rivalry fanfiction. It happens to me, every so often, that I end up really into a specific pop culture property and then just ~*nip*~ over to AO3 (or, back in Ye Olde Days, FF.net and LJ) to see what’s there and, like, ooh here’s […]

If Poetry Could Kill

The Poet Emperess by Shen Tao

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I have both ElCicco and Narfa to thank for bringing this book to my attention earlier this year. Completely worth it and up there with The Everlasting and The Raven Scholar as one of the best page turner’s of the year so far.  Very mild spoilers below: This is another one of those fantasy novels that carries over a close Venn diagram with another sub genre—in this case politics intrigue. If you like stories about court politics, this will likely appeal. In the kingdom of […]



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