Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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I Can Always Rely on Stashed Romance Novels

The Write Escape by Charish Reid

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I read my first Charish Reid novel back in 2020 right before COVID shut everything down for a while. Hearts on Hold has been a book I think of often. In 2021 I read (Trust) Falling for You, but somehow managed to skip Reid in my 2022 reading excursions. Since the books I brought with me for holiday travel were a bit hit and miss (Make You Mine This Christmas and The Holiday Trap were good, the other two books I had with me probably […]

I do not understand why people like this.

A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham

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Thanks to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It hasn’t affected the content of my review. I am sad to say this will not be a positive review. Firstly, I want to make it clear that the two stars here is specifically for the audio version. I think if I had read the hard copy I would have rounded up to three stars (me eleven months later: or maybe not). I found the narrator to have an exceptionally irritating way of speaking that emphasized […]

“Because love is real, and it happens everywhere. It even happens here.”

For the Love of April French by Penny Aimes

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For the Love of April French is an immensely readable book with a strong authorial voice that is a wonderful fluffy romance playing in the D/s kink realm. It’s the story of April and Dennis who have a temporary no-strings sex agreement, but Dennis is secretly trying to woo April, which is a great trope to build an emotions-first BDSM romance around. Dennis and April are wonderfully flawed and human characters. Aimes writes with her characters humanities front and center. April and Dennis can be […]

“I am both ever evolving and ever decaying.” or another book in need of a CW

Charm and Strange by Stephanie Kuehn

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Something is going on with my reading this year, I seem to be swinging back and forth between 5-star books and 2-star ones, which means I should have anticipated trouble with Charm and Strange based purely on it falling in my reading order behind Boyfriend Material. This one didn’t make me angry as some of my other two star reads, Always, in December and Seduction, but it flirted with the line. This 2014 Winner of the William C. Morris Award is designed to be read […]

“Whichever story you believe, my mother, Chang’e, became immortal. As did I.”

Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan

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A child of the Moon Goddess, and an immortal herself,  Xingyin grows up on the moon, with just her mother & their family servant/long time companion. For the most part, the three of them are happy, if isolated. Xingyin senses a grief in her mother that she can’t quite explain, and within herself she feels a growing sense to reach out … for something more. She can’t label it, and her mother has warned her against reaching for it, but the pull towards that other […]

But They Made Up Their Minds, If All Roads were Blind, They Wouldn’t Give Up Till They Died

She Rides Shotgun by Jordan Harper

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Brutal and beautifully written, Jordan Harper’s debut novel, She Rides Shotgun, hooked me before the end of the first chapter and was hard to put down even as I wanted to look away.  The body count is high but so was my investment in the main characters, eleven-year-old Polly McCluskey and her ex-con father, Nate. When Nate shows up at Polly’s school, Polly knows something is off because she thought her dad was still in prison.  What she doesn’t know is that her mom and […]



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