Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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A book so good I may soon need an intervention if I’m ever to stop re-reading it

Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire

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An absolutely fantastic follow up to Every Heart A Doorway, Down Among The Sticks and Bones gives us the back story to two of the most interesting characters from its predecessor, showing us how Jack and Jill found themselves at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children in an outing that is so brilliant I found myself devouring it within hours before turning around and reading it all over again. Jack and Jill weren’t always who we now know them to be. Born Jacqueline and Jillian […]

Oh, to be a wayward child…

Every Heart A Doorway by Seanan McGuire

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Children have always had a habit of disappearing into different worlds, whether they’ve strayed off a path in the woods or climbed into a wardrobe during a game of hide and seek, but what happens to those children once they come back home? For many of those children, they never wanted to return in the first place. And for the parents of those children, they just want their child to be the one they were before they disappeared, stop talking nonsense about the fairy worlds […]

More Ash Than Fire, But Still Warm

Ash by Malinda Lo

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Bingo Update – This is for my Rainbow Flag square. Malinda Lo is out and proud. As an added bonus, this is also a queer retelling of Cinderella, so it’s a queer writer telling a queer story! I love a good fairy tale re-telling. Contemporary literature is rife with reimaginings, updates, and new spins on old tales told around the fire…but not all of them are good. I’m glad to say that Ash by Melinda Lo *is* good, but it doesn’t quite rise to the ranks […]

“She sounds like someone who spends a lot of time in libraries, which are the best sorts of people.”

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Cathrynne M. Valente

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12 year old September is an only child whose father has gone off to war and her mother off to work, leaving her alone with nothing but her thoughts for company. Wishing to be away from her boring life and off on an adventure, the Green Wind hears said wish and spirits her off to Fairyland. Having recently come under new management, September finds Fairyland in turmoil. The beloved Queen Mallow has disappeared having been usurped by a new and far less lovable ruler, the […]

The lies that bind us

The Girl Who Drank The Moon by Kelly Barnhill

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Though The Girl Who Drank The Moon is apparently for youngsters, there’s a lot in here that olds will love too. On the edge of a forest, villagers leave a baby each year as an offering to the witch they’ve grown up terrified of. As far as they’re concerned, by giving up the baby’s life, they’ll be safeguarding their own for another year. Meanwhile, the perplexed witch hurries to collect the abandoned babies, nourishing them with starlight until she can find them loving families on […]

Bringing a little magic into my life

A Pocketful of Crows by Joanne M. Harris

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This year has not been the best for me reading wise – I seem to have little to no attention span at the moment, and for the past month I’ve been slogging though a book on magic (don’t judge me) that has actually been a far from magical experience. And so, looking for something a little lighter, I stumbled upon A Pocketful of Crows. This one had the magic I had been looking for.  A nameless girl lives in the forest. Keeping apart from others, […]



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