Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Eliza and James, sitting in a tree, M-U-R-D-E-R-I-N-G

How to Kill Your Rival by Effie Campbell

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3.5 stars Thank you to Boldwood Books and NetGalley for this ARC. This has not influenced my review in any way. This book is on sale now. Eliza Hamilton (yup, that is her name; not sure if the author is a fan of the musical or if the name is a coincidence) is the heir apparent to the Death Council, a secret organisation full of hired killers. While her father is battling cancer, she is to lead in his place, but most of the other […]

Mafia, magic, and sin

Terror at the Gates by Scarlett St. Clair

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Terror at the Gates is the first book in the new Blood of Lilith duology series from Scarlett St. Clair. The city of Eden is split into different districts ruled by mafia-esque families. Women of this world are born with magic, which they are allowed to use only if approved by their fathers or husbands. We meet Lilith Leviathan after she has run away from her posh district to live by her own rules in the red light district. She has sex magic that allows […]

Smut at its finest: Lights Out

Lights Out by Navessa Allen

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Lights Out was smut at its finest. A trauma ER nurse crushes on a sexy masked man via social media. She dares him to dirty things to her, never expecting anything. It was fantasy to blow off steam after work…until things get very, very real. MILD SPOILERS  Josh (the masked man) comes across Aly’s (the nurse) spicy comment and realizes he might know her IRL. It starts with some mild stalking, but ramps up over the course of the story. Josh is a shut-in and […]

Took a wrong turn at Albuquerque

Blackthorn by J.T. Geissinger

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What the actual f*CK did I just read? Ok. As a disclaimer, I received this book at Romchella, a romance readers retreat, as a free ARC from Bramble. They did not ask us to review it at all, let alone influence that review. I thank them for the early access! I’ll keep the spoilers out of it, though I’d dearly love to talk about them, due to the fact this book isn’t even released yet (edit – it is now, but I wrote this before […]

“It’s okay to love your darkness and still love yourself. It doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you a whole one.”

Scythe & Sparrow by Brynne Weaver

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About a year ago The Ruinous Love books by Brynne Weaver entered my world, and now I’ve read the final one and it was just what I wanted it to be without me having known what I wanted it to be when I went in. Scythe & Sparrow tells the story of Fionn and Rose that has been teased since Sloane and Rowan show up on Fionn’s doorstep in Butcher & Blackbird. Fionn is the youngest Kane sibling, a doctor who walked away from a promising surgical […]

“There’s power in finding secrets and blowing them up in a beautiful, bright light.”

Leather & Lark by Brynne Weaver

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The second book in the Ruinous Love Trilogy, Leather & Lark, hinges on a marriage of convenience trope, but that kind of undersells the stakes, this is a marriage of safety and sacrifice. Sure, it’s convenient to keep Lachlan and Rowan alive… but there’s more happening here. This book is way more character driven than its predecessor, but not because the characters are necessarily super strongly developed, but because the plot kind of disappears for a while. Action picks up about two years before the […]



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