Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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It’s like you’re a mirror/my mirror staring back at me/oooooh!

Otherbound by Duyvis, Corrine

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(Blame “It’s Gonna Be May” on my Timberlake quote) Nolan Santiago suffers from frequent blackouts. His family has been desperate to find the medication that will ease his daily and frequent epileptic fits. But the reason nothing is working is because Nolan isn’t having fits. When Nolan closes his eyes – even when he merely blinks – he is in another world, and in another life. Amara has been a servant on the run for most of her life. She was pulled from the palace […]

“…a duty, out of sheer cussedness, not to disappear completely, simply to ease the conscience of the rest.”

Girl in the Dark by Anna Lyndsey

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I thought this was going to be a depressing read that I trudged through because it was short and I sometimes feel obligated to bear witness to others’ pain. That was not at all the case. This book is gorgeous. It’s poetic and absolutely beautiful. There’s a recurring metaphor for suicidal thoughts that it just incredible. It’s funny and sad and really, really, really beautiful. It wasn’t that I didn’t think someone with a debilitating illness (in Lyndsey’s case, she has an extreme sensitivity to […]

Don’t hide your light under a bushel, darling.

Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling

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(Title quote is from Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage) Aven Green has a pretty great life as a middle schooler in Kansas.  She plays on the soccer team, has a wonderful group of friends, is a creative writer, and plays the guitar. She also has no arms. She was born without them, though if anyone asks about it (and boy do they), she always has a wild tale to tell them about where they went and how. But her life is about to be upended: her […]

Frustrating and lovely and decidedly different.

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As a very new reader to romance, the books I’ve picked up have tended to be fairly new, as in published within the last 5-10 years, and decidedly feminist or progressive in their mentality. Even if they’re not openly advocating for women’s rights or chiding the customs that disadvantage(d) women, the stories I’ve loved have mostly had a bent of “they’re awesome but overlooked because of social/cultural reasons.” Enter Flowers from the Storm, which is more than twenty years old and not un-feminist or non-progressive, but it comes […]

Read it because it will make you sad and angry

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This is a short novel that reads very quickly, but at a certain point, when you realize a tragedy is in the offing, it might slow you down. I dreaded finding out what was going to happen to characters whom I liked so much. The Book of Unknown Americans focuses on immigrant families living in the same apartment complex in Wilmington, Delaware. Henriquez allows each family or individual to speak for themselves in each chapter, and so the reader learns about the diversity within. They […]

A precious window into the life of a disabled child

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Draper sets out to address social prejudices against those among us with disabilities, by enabling the reader to view the world through the eyes of 11-year-old Melody, a victim of cerebral palsy. Melody is confined to a wheelchair, unable to walk or even sit upright, cannot feed herself, has uncontrollable spasms of her arms and legs, and occasionally drools in public. Worst of all, however, is that she has a mind that functions at top speed, a photographic memory, a thirst for knowledge, a need […]



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