Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Botany, Bears and Beaver Ponds

Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey

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This is a lovely, sad, beautifully written book. I feel bad for everyone who rated it one star on Goodreads just because it wasn’t a faithful retelling of Beauty and the Beast. Because if you read it for what it is, instead of what it isn’t, it’s really quite wonderful. Ivey touches on themes of motherhood, love, personal freedom, mental health and the natural world, all in a dark fairy tale setting. Single mom Birdie does the best that she can for her daughter, Emaleen, […]

The Bear Husband

Black Woods Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey

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When The Snow Child came out, I remember being completely blown away by the story – the landscape of Alaska, the characters – everything came together perfectly to create this story. It was such a perfect novel, I am not sure how any author could follow it up. In fact, I am not even entirely sure The Snow Child would still live up to my memory of it if I re-read it now. Overall, I would say this one worked better for me than her […]

an overly-rosy wintry fairy tale

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

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The description of The Snow Child kinda intrigued me when it first came out, and I do love novels that put a fresh spin on old fairy tales. Then a friend mentioned loving it, so I thought, why not, and  put it on my digital library holds, because it’d be fine as a dog-walking read, probably. The novel focuses on an older couple, Jack and Mabel, who moved to Alaska and are homesteading there in the 1910s following heartbreaks in their former life on the East […]

Even from the windows of a prison, Rhodia was a beautiful place.

Aftershocks by Marko Kloos

The Instrument by John O'Hara

The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

Meaty by Samantha Irby

The Innocence of Father Brown by GK Chesterton

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Aftershocks – 3/5 Stars This is a novel that begins a new trilogy by Marko Kloos (author of the Terms of Enlistment series, which I haven’t read). I bought it from Audible one day on sale for like $3, and while I am not entirely sure I am going to seek out further books in the series, I found that to be a pretty good deal. It’s structured similar to the Expanse series or Game of Thrones, in that there are several main characters, from […]

There Was Once A Girl Made of Snow…

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

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Wow. I don’t have much to say except that I really enjoyed this book from beginning to end. I have never read a book by Eowyn Ivey before and will definitely seek out more works. This book really made me want to crawl out into the woods under a starry sky in the middle of winter and just take a deep breath and let it just roll over me. I thought the character development of Jack and Mabel really worked. Also loved how Ivey dealt […]

“She Always Keeps a Part of Herself a Mystery”

To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey

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Bingo Square: Reading the TBR The Snow Child was in my top five reads the year I read it.  Given that, it seems like I should have run out to read Ivey’s follow up, but I didn’t even get the Kindle version of it until January 2018, and then didn’t get around to reading it until this week.  I’m not sure if I was hesitant after the magic of The Snow Child, or if I was worried about being emotionally gutted by this one as […]



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