Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Historian friends to lovers, a haunted mansion and a potentially explosive teaspoon

The Antiquarian's Object of Desire by India Holton

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Amelia Tarrant and Caleb Stirling are both history professors at Oxford with a speciality in magical antiques. They have been best friends since childhood, but any hint of affection between them could be ruinous to Amelia’s reputation and the careers of both. As a result, they have to appear to be enemies and stage elaborate public fights every so often to make sure all their colleagues believe them to be bitter rivals. One such fight, involving a volatile magical teaspoon, causes a big enough explosion […]

I really wanted to love this, but instead I was just a bit whelmed

Daughter of Tides by Kit Rocha

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3.5 stars Naia is a very young water nymph, born directly from the Dreaming, but she has the memories and experiences of so many who have lived before her who had any connection to the sea. Einar was once a mortal man before he became the immortal pirate lord known as the Kraken, tied to his magical ship and his equally immortal crew. Aleksi is the most charming and beloved of all the gods; he is literally The Lover. After the events in Queen of […]

A promising debut cozy fantasy romance that didn’t quite fully hit.

Letters from the Last Apothecary by Bita Behzadi

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Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House | Hay House LLC for the Audio ARC. It hasn’t affected the contents of my review. This is a promising debut by Bita Behzadi, and I will be reading further books from her, but this one had some issues that mean I can’t give it a full four stars. Mostly, I had a really hard time both getting in to the story, and caring about the characters. It took about 33% for the first, and about 60% for […]

“You are the most fascinating thing in this beautiful house. I’d like to introduce my fists to whoever taught you to stop talking about the things that interest you.”

A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske

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4.5 stars Sir Robert “Robin” Blyth ends up in a civil service position he is vastly unprepared for, as it turns out, he is supposed to be a liaison between the secret magical world and the more mundane regular world. Usually, the post is held by an individual from a magical family just unlucky enough not to have any magic of their own (seems like there are quite a few such “duds” in the magic-wielding families of society). Robin, on the other hand, is both […]

“Men will literally go on a quest to find a dragon than talk about their feelings”

Bromantasy by Máire Roche

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Thanks to G.B Putnam’s Sons and NetGalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own. This book is out on May 26th. Juniper O’Reilly shares a house with his totally platonic best friend, Mo Elthorn, and they run a farm together. Juniper has a tendency to get into bar brawls, while Mo holds him back and takes him home afterwards. One memorable evening, however, Juniper gets into a fight with the wrong guy and incapacitates a henchman enough that he is forced to take said […]

“Writing gives you the power to shape your own world when the real one hurts too much”

The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

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Dark Corner Selection: March 2026 In a different version of 16th-century Spain, young Luzia Cortado works grudgingly as a scullery maid for the miserable and petty Doña Valentina. Luzia can use what she calls “small magics” to make her life easier. She can mend seams, multiply the groceries, unburn bread or reassemble broken things. She performs these little spells, learned from generations of her Jewish ancestors, by singing quietly. Luzia is a convert; she dutifully goes to Mass and hides any traces of her Jewish […]



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