Cannonball Read 14

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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“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 […]

Reconstruction Reimagined

The Conductors by Nicole Glover

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I remember reading something about Nicole Glover’s novel before it came out and thinking, “That sounds funs.”  It did not disappoint.  The story is set in the Reconstruction of the 1870’s but this is a reimagining of historical events with magic as an important element.  Before the war, Hetty Rhodes, a former slave, was a conductor on the Underground Railroad using magic, smarts, and luck to bring other slaves north to freedom. Now that the Civil War has ended, Hetty and her husband, Benjy, are […]

cbr12bingo – Repeat (and TWO Bingos!)

Luster by Raven Leilani

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Raven Leilani has exploded into the scene like the chestburster in Alien. Fully-formed, unapologetic, covered in blood, and completely in control while annihilating the guts of a mediocre man. Luster has been racking up well-deserved accolades, and I truly cannot wait to see what she does next- although I am relieved that this is her debut, and there isn’t a back catalog waiting to destroy me hiding just out of view. Not only is her work fantastic, but it also allows me to knock two “bingos” (Money, […]



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