Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Put your emptiness to melody

Paint Our Song (Cloverlily Book #1) by Maia Kinley

December 13, 2025 by carmelpie Leave a Comment

Baffled, Miles makes a face and belts out the next line to the song. Calvin laughs again and shakes his head. For a moment, and not for the first time, Miles is stunned by Calvin—at his rosy cheeks, at how he throws his head back when he laughs, and how he’s smiling wider than Miles has ever seen him. Is his terrible singing doing this? He might just sing even worse. Miles is a professional artist, a painter, who must return to his hometown of […]

Filed Under: Romance Tagged With: fame, gay romance, grumpy sunshine, Maia Kinley, queer romance, rock star romance, small town romance

carmelpie's CBR17 Review No:44 · Genres: Romance · Tags: fame, gay romance, grumpy sunshine, Maia Kinley, queer romance, rock star romance, small town romance ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

“I’m living in the moment!” Jamie randomly slurted. A cross between blurted and slurred.

Rookie Recovery (Bobcat Boys Book 1) by Lex Easton and Jemma Croft

December 7, 2025 by carmelpie Leave a Comment

I pried myself—however reluctantly—out of his grip. “Yeah, I take it they don’t have Walmart on your side of the pond, but we’re not fucking around here. There is no universe in which that’s hot.” Archie Bowman is a star on the ice. Despite his consistently good performance and continuous improvement as a pro hockey player, he keeps getting traded. When he gets picked up by the Bringham Bobcats, he has a serious case of imposter syndrome. Not only must he perform on the ice, […]

Filed Under: Fiction, Romance Tagged With: age gap romance, British author, gay romance, grumpy sunshine, hockey romance, hurt/comfort, Jemma Croft, Lex Easton, Lex Easton & Jemma Croft, Lex Easton and Jemma Croft, queer romance

carmelpie's CBR17 Review No:41 · Genres: Fiction, Romance · Tags: age gap romance, British author, gay romance, grumpy sunshine, hockey romance, hurt/comfort, Jemma Croft, Lex Easton, Lex Easton & Jemma Croft, Lex Easton and Jemma Croft, queer romance ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

A little faerie magic and a lot about real world sustainable gardening practices

Shroom for Improvement (Mythical Mishaps #1) by Jemma Croft

November 9, 2025 by carmelpie Leave a Comment

“So, you’ve seen me naked before?” I said. “Oh, yes, many times. You have a beautiful body, by the way.” My cheeks heated. Damn. It had been so long since anybody had complimented me, I was blushing at the disembodied words of a magical house. ​​ ― Jemma Croft, Shroom for Improvement CBR17 Bingo: School Sonny is a professor and his knowledge of mycology is a key part of the story. Sonny Daye has a problem. To complete his research on mushroom glamours, he must […]

Filed Under: Fantasy, Fiction, Romance Tagged With: cbr17bingo, drug use, enemies to lovers, fae, Gardening, gay romance, grumpy sunshine, idiots to lovers, Jemma Croft, magical mushrooms, queer romance, Sustainability

carmelpie's CBR17 Review No:36 · Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Romance · Tags: cbr17bingo, drug use, enemies to lovers, fae, Gardening, gay romance, grumpy sunshine, idiots to lovers, Jemma Croft, magical mushrooms, queer romance, Sustainability ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

Love Islands

Not Like Before by Lily Seabrooke and Jacqueline Ramsden

July 11, 2025 by Jake 2 Comments

Read as part of CBR17 Bingo: starts with N.  I’ve been trying to read more books with trans authors and trans main characters. Given this perilous moment for trans people, I worry about the erasure of their stories. And I think it’s important to take them in. Also, the trans experience, like every other marginalized experience, is not one just of suffering and pain. Trans people feel joy, feel ecstasy, feel euphoria. Trans people live their lives like any other and mostly want the same […]

Filed Under: Fiction, Romance Tagged With: cbr17bingo, grumpy sunshine, LGBTQIA, Lily Seabrooke and Jacqueline Ramsden, Not Like Before, queer romance, Romance, sapphic romance, starts with N, trans character

Jake's CBR17 Review No:24 · Genres: Fiction, Romance · Tags: cbr17bingo, grumpy sunshine, LGBTQIA, Lily Seabrooke and Jacqueline Ramsden, Not Like Before, queer romance, Romance, sapphic romance, starts with N, trans character ·
Rating:
· 2 Comments

He was handsome, Ben supposed, if you liked angry men.

It Takes Two to Tumble (Seducing the Sedgwicks, #1) by Cat Sebastian

March 25, 2025 by carmelpie Leave a Comment

This was some unholy combination of desire and friendship and something else, because apparently when you took workaday lust and combined it with affection and threw in garden-variety honesty, you got something new and totally different.” ― Cat Sebastian, It Takes Two to Tumble At the start of the novel, Captain Phillip Dacre returned home from a two year voyage with the royal navy. His dutiful wife, Caroline, passed away while he was at sea, and he braced himself to face three children he barely […]

Filed Under: Fiction, Romance Tagged With: Cat Sebastian, Edwardian England, gay romance, grumpy sunshine, male nanny, queer romance, small town romance

carmelpie's CBR17 Review No:11 · Genres: Fiction, Romance · Tags: Cat Sebastian, Edwardian England, gay romance, grumpy sunshine, male nanny, queer romance, small town romance ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

I Loathed This Book. Hostile Review Follows

The Au Pair Affair by Tessa Bailey

October 25, 2024 by Mrs. Julien 5 Comments

Is this grumpy/sunshine romance or old coot/youth? Do vegans wear leather skirts? How much does an average hockey player weigh? Why does she keep cooking them dinner? How is this a rational custody arrangement? Keep reading to find out. From Amazon: Tallulah is smart, vivacious, and studying to be a marine biologist. She’s also twenty-six and broke. So when Burgess, a battle-scarred hockey veteran and newly single dad, offers her a job as his live-in nanny, she jumps at the opportunity to get paid while […]

Filed Under: Fiction, Romance Tagged With: age gap romance, Contemporary Romance, grumpy sunshine, Romance, Tessa Bailey

Mrs. Julien's CBR16 Review No:28 · Genres: Fiction, Romance · Tags: age gap romance, Contemporary Romance, grumpy sunshine, Romance, Tessa Bailey ·
Rating:
· 5 Comments
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