Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Backstory Can Be Relevant, Who Knew

Spy X Family vols. 14-15 by Tatsuya Endo

by Leave a Comment

Turns out that sometimes backstory time can be both interesting and maybe even relevant. Spy x Family is essentially an action-comedy where a spy has to create a family to get close to his mark; the gal he marries is secretly an assassin, the daughter he adopts is secretly a telepath (but she’s 6, meaning she understanding things not the conventional way a lot), and the family dog has some kind of foretelling (but is also a dog, and thus cannot speak people). For most […]

You Know What They Say About Assumptions…

Lady Suspicious by Kate Archer

Convince Me, Viscount by Kate Archer

by Leave a Comment

CBR17 Bingo: Free (- Thank you for the extension! I’d given up on hitting blackout this year, but LOOK AT ME NOW.) Lady Suspicious – 4.25 stars It’s the turn of Lady Winsome, the sixth of the ironically named Nicolet sisters, to make her debut on the marriage mart. Armed with her knowledge of rogues from rumor sheets and gothic romances, she’s determined to make a good match – but the only man she’s interested in sets off all her warning bells. This is the […]

Am I losing my sense of humor, or is Christopher Moore losing his?

Anima Rising by Christopher Moore

by 1 Comment

CBR 17 BINGO: Arts, because Gustav Klimt and his contemporaries figure into the plot Double BINGO! Across: Arts, Borrow, Citizen, Work, White Diagonal: Arts, Red, N, Diaspora, Rec’d I’ve been a Christopher Moore fan for a long time. (Who doesn’t love Lamb and The Stupidest Angel?) Not all his novels are brilliant, and even in my own household we don’t always agree on what works and what doesn’t (I love Fool and its sequels, while my husband doesn’t care for them at all; he loves […]

I warmed to this novel, but it took awhile

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

by Leave a Comment

CBR 17 BINGO: Family, because family relationships (police officers Jim & Jack; Anna-Lena and Roger; Ro and Julia; the bank robber and the robber’s children) are motivating factors for the characters Back in 2017, I was, like everyone else, charmed by A Man Called Ove, so when I saw another novel by Fredrik Backman in a Little Free Library, I snapped it up. It started strong when, on the first page, I smiled at this paragraph, “This story is about a lot of things, but […]

Vampires and Demons and Fae, Oh My!

Sparrowhawk by Delilah S. Dawson, Rebecca Nalty (Primary Contributor), Matias Basla (Illustrator)

A Vampire in the Bathhouse by Niko Izuki

by Leave a Comment

Sparrowhawk by Delilah S. Dawson, Rebecca Nalty (Primary Contributor), Matias Basla (Illustrator) – 3 stars The illegitimate daughter of a naval captain, Artemisia has always been out of place in her family and English high society alike. But when she’s yanked through a mirror into a dark realm, she will have to fight for a way back home if she means to save everyone. With the explosion of fae in popular literature in the last decade or so, I feel like they’ve generally lost their […]

It Follows

My Idol Sits the Next Desk Over!, Vol. 1 by Tetsu Tsutsui and Koyubi Sugawara

Hauntress by Minetarō Mochizuki

by Leave a Comment

My Idol Sits the Next Desk Over!, Vol. 1 by Tetsu Tsutsui and Koyubi Sugawara – 3.5 stars Sakiko is a die-hard fan of the upcoming idol girl group Spring Shine, so of course when the new girl at school introduces herself to the class, she immediately recognizes her as her very favorite singer Chiro-chan. This is a cute, breezy read about a young fangirl working very hard to balance her adoration of singer Chihiro with her wish to be friends on a personal level. […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo