Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Kind, Tender Romance Heroes for the Win

The Ultimate Pi Day Party by Jackie Lau

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Apparently incoming global pandemics make concentrating on reading tough for your friendly book club maven. Other than Station Eleven I didn’t finish another book for three weeks. But now that we’re in the “ordered to stay home by my governor” phase I’ve apparently settled in and am ready to return to a semi-normal schedule. So, as the anxiety fog cleared, I remembered that I had intended to read and review The Ultimate Pi Day Party by Jackie Lau for Pi Day on the 14th. I […]

Fake dating, friends to lovers and a hilarious game of pictionary

A Fake Girlfriend for Chinese New Year by Jackie Lau

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After the active interference of his parents and grandparents with the matchmaking extravaganza over Thanksgiving, Zack Wong is very worried that something similar will be repeated for Chinese New Year, especially since two of his brothers now have girlfriends, and the family seem determined that all four Wong children end up in happy couples. To make sure his family can’t meddle in his personal life a second time, he talks his good friend, Jo MacGregor, into posing as his fake girlfriend. They even go on a […]

A Valentine’s Delight

A Big Surprise for Valentine's Day (Holidays with the Wongs #4) by Jackie Lau

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In recent months Jackie Lau has jumped to the “read right away” position as her novellas in the Holidays with the Wongs series has been released. While I didn’t get an ARC this time, I have signed up to be considered in future. A Big Surprise for Valentine’s Day makes me feel that was a very good choice. Picking up after the events of A Match Made for Thanksgiving and A Second Chance Road Trip for Christmas and running concurrently with A Fake Girlfriend for […]

You Deserve a Strawberry Garnish

A Big Surprise for Valentine's Day by Jackie Lau

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It is no secret that I have become a fan of Jackie Lau in the past year. I reviewed 8 of her books last year and am looking forward to reading and reviewing more in the future. I received A Big Surprise for Valentine’s Day as an arc from the author in exchange for an honest review. I’ve enjoyed the entire Holidays with the Wong series. Lau set out to write a series that ticked a lot of boxes – small town romance, holiday romance, racially […]

One Night Stand Fail

A Match Made for Thanksgiving by Jackie Lau

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I saw faintingviolet’s review for the third novella in this series, and she mentioned that in the first novella, the parents had ambushed all four of their adult children with Thanksgiving set ups which were based on romance novellas tropes – the set ups were a disaster but I was curious to see what tropes their parents had tried to force, and picked the Thanksgiving novella as a result. Nick is the middle brother in his family, and lives in Toronto.  He loves the city […]

Lau writes characters you care about – and that’s a really good thing.

A Fake Girlfriend for Chinese New Year (Holidays with the Wongs #3) by Jackie Lau

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I continue to love the conceit of these novellas; there are four Wong children, all unattached, and their parents and grandparents hatch a plan to set them up with potential partners at Canadian Thanksgiving based on the tropes in the romance novels that their mother and grandmother read. The initial matches go terribly, but as the holidays progress each Wong sibling finds love in different romantic tropey ways. For A Fake Girlfriend for Chinese New Year Lau combined the friends to lovers and fake relationship […]



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