Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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“It was enough simply to be for a while alongside a friend. Everything else was just noise.” (I wish this book was just noise)

A Fellowship of Games & Fables: Adenashire Book Three by J. Penner

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Jez, Adenashire’s resident grumpy Fennex, would rather curl up for a nap and hibernate through the season rather than go out in the snow and frolic. Unfortunately, a drunken boast lands her in the middle of the holiday festivities, competing in the Yule competition, and fake dating her friend, Taenya. (Well, that’s what you get when you mix pounding back drinks with an antagonistic personality. Or being a FMC in a Cozy Romantasy; either one.) Plagued by chronic fatigue (for unexplained reasons. Could be the […]

Insubstantial Fluff

A Fellowship of Librarians & Dragons by J. Penner

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Bingo 21: Review I may have already had A Fellowship of Librarians and Dragons on my TBR before looking up reviews, but turns out I had a pretty similar reaction to Bjornsnipe: https://cannonballread.com/2025/10/a-fellowship-of-librarians-dragons-adenashire-book-two-bjornsnipe/ This series, not totally surprisingly, appears to be let’s take a core group, and then pair everyone off, one novel at a time. There’s not a lot of substance, and no attention to realism. This is pure wish fulfillment, where everything turns out  fine in the end, romantically, family-wise, dragon baby-wise, friend-wise, […]

Tea, and Family Troubles, and Dragons, Oh My!

A Fellowship of Librarians & Dragons: Adenashire, Book Two by J. Penner

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Set six months after the events of A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic, Dolgrilla Butterbuckle (and isn’t that just a name and a half) has settled in nicely to the village of Ardenshire. Sure, she’s away from her family, but seeing as they have always been disappointed by how she’s chosen to live her life, Doli isn’t too put out by the fact. She has her friends, romance novels, and copious amounts of tea, and nothing seems to be going wrong. Not until her parents […]

GBBO Romantasy Meringue

A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic by J. Penner

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Bingo 15 :White Notice the color of the title text? And few splashes of said color elsewhere? Ok then. However, if you want to be more creative about it, white is often represented as the absence of color, which could be argued to be a metaphor for the total absence of substance in this novel. So, there’s that too. Now to be absolutely clear, the absence of substance is exactly what I needed when I picked this up. I needed a palate cleasner from something […]

Can I Get Some Cooling Fairies?

A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic: Adenashire, Book One by J. Penner

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Who wants to be normal when you can be spectacular? In the heart of Adenashire, a world that is divided into those who have magic and therefore matter, and those who don’t, who matter far less, human baker Arleta Starstone works twice as hard to sell her baked goods, dreaming of stockpiling enough to open the bakery of her dreams. So, when Ervash, her orc neighbor (biggest fan, and with his husband Verdreth, Arleta’s erstwhile father figure) secretly enters her creations into the prestigious Langheim […]

Cozy Fantasy GBBO

A Fellowship of Bakers and Magic by J Penner

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Arleta Starstone adores baking, but she’ll admit that she’s just scraping by selling her wares thanks to the fact that she’s magicless.  When her neighbor enters her in the Langheim Baking Battle, Arleta doesn’t plan on actually going.  But between her neighbors and the elf who comes to tell her she’s been selected, Arleta finds herself convinced.  Armed with only her baking skills, Arleta will take on the competition, find some new friends, and even maybe fall in love. I really wanted to like this […]



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