Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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A twist on Beauty and the Beast in this start to a romantic fantasy duology (I refuse to accept romantasy as a genre, you can’t make me)

Silver & Blood by Jessie Mihalik

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Thank you to NetGalley and Avon for this ARC. It has not affected my opinions or my review. About a year ago, the small village where Riela lives alone after the death of her father was threatened by a flood. Riela unlocked magical powers and managed to divert the water and save the village. Now one of the villagers has been savaged by a monster in the woods, and the mostly hostile villagers insist that she go into the forest and dispatch the monster for […]

Breaking the cycle of abusive power

The Jasad Heir by Sara Hashem

The Jasad Crown by Sara Hashem

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I was surprised how much I liked this duology, especially the first one in the series, given that it involved a genocide and two main characters that represented the oppressor and oppressed, a dynamic I usually stay far away from in historical fiction (and yet, between this and the Daevabad trilogy, it isn’t a dealbreaker in fantasy for me). I also appreciated that this series didn’t stretch into a trilogy needlessly and there was more than enough going on to justify a duology. Ten years […]

Game over, want to play again?

A Bright Heart by Kate Chenli

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I saw LB’s review of this and thought it sounded intriguing enough asa premise that I bookmarked it so remember for later. I still need to read the second one in the duology but overall enjoyed this. I will say, I was trying to overcomplicate this one a little bit with my guessing so you know, this might be more enjoyable as a read to just let it happen. As Mingshin lays dying at the foot of the throne at the hand of the man […]

Dangerously in Love

My Beautiful Enemy by Sherry Thomas

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My Beautiful Enemy by Sherry Thomas was a historical romance book club pick from The Ripped Bodice. I sped-read the first half and didn’t return to it last year. And then in February, I remembered, and it was so worth finishing. Ying-Ying, aka Catherine Blade, is a badass. She was trained in martial arts because her guardian/stepfather, Da-Ren, was a Chinese warlord. She makes an enemy of Lin, a dangerous assassin, who relentlessly hunts her across the globe. When the story begins, she is hiding […]

Am I breathing underwater?

A Letter to the Luminous Deep by Sylvie Cathrall

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This is one of those novels I kept going back and forth on whether I wanted to read it – beautiful cover, epistolary novel, mystery – all of these sounded like elements I’d be into. On the other hand, reviews were generally positive but overly so and I didn’t know anyone personally that had read it that I could use as a gage. But I finally decided to dive in (pun intended), and this could have been a pass. It’s not horrible, there are some […]

A little light on answers for my preferences

The Witch Roads by Kate Elliott

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This wasn’t quite the novel I was expecting – there isn’t anything inaccurate about the novel’s description but I was expecting a fun, fast paced fantasy/adventure novel and instead got more of dense road trip novel that was so slow paced it would almost be cozy if not for the dark subject matter. Elen is a courier in a sleepy town at the edge of the empire. Elen and her recently deceased sister Aoving settled there over a decade ago, along with Aoving’s son Kem, […]



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