Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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“A kiss might be blameless, so long as it was the other person doing the leaning. Was it your fault, really, if someone else kissed you?”

The Portrait of a Mirror by A. Natasha Joukovsky

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What if A.S. Byatt’s Possession popped up again in the internet age? The Portrait of a Mirror answers that question with a heaping helping of Greek mythology to boot. Diana, Wes, Dale, and Vivien are spoiled obsessives staring at themselves into eternity. They are slimy people, but you know what? I don’t care! I want them to be happy in their clandestine adventures, and I want them to be miserable in their public falling outs! Wes and Diana are married. Their relationship is a constant sparring match that […]

“I knew our relationship was strong, and like the house he was renovating for me, it had good bones”

Renovation of Love by Meka James

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Second chance romance is one of my favorite tropes, so of course I jumped on this as soon as I saw the gorgeous cover and read the blurb. And it’s a really lovely story about two high school sweethearts finding each other – and love – again. “I was here to get this new business venture off the ground and start anew. None of my plans entailed rekindling a long-dead romance with the first and, if I were being honest with myself, only real love […]

A gorgeous exploration of family, grief and love

Love at First by Kate Clayborn

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Kate Clayborn’s spectacular Love Lettering was the first book I read in 2020. Now, while the rest of the year didn’t work out so well, I can’t deny that it was an amazing reading year for me, and now Love at First looks like it’s continuing that tradition. I am an absolute sucker for a found family story, and this is an expert exploration of that trope and its power. It’s also got a bit of a Romeo & Juliet feel, and since that’s literally […]

The stories we tell ourselves

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

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Conversations with Friends has earned the (dubious) honor of receiving my first 5-star review of the year. For the first 3-4 chapters in the book, I didn’t think it would, but it ended up being a compulsive read that kept popping up in my mind when I was doing other things. Conversations is a tight story about a young student, Frances, and her best friend (and ex-girlfriend) Bobbi, who meet and befriend Melissa, a journalist married to a handsome actor, Nick. As Frances is drawn into Melissa […]

Lower animal content, higher angst for this sequel

Best Laid Plans by Roan Parrish

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I was intensely curious about Jack’s brother Charlie after reading Better Than People, so I was very pleased to see that this book would be about him. Alas, the animal content of this book isn’t quite as high as the previous one in the series – only two cats. But gosh, Jane and Marmot are pretty amazing cats. When Rye inherits a house from a grandfather he never met, it seems too good to be true. But given he’s been couchsurfing in Seattle, he makes […]



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