Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

A single interesting character and a predictable plot made this a dull read.

The Winner's Curse (The Winner's Trilogy #1) by Marie Rutkoski

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CBR18 Bingo: Justice – Arin and his co-conspirators rise up against the occupying forces and enact justice upon them. She remembered how her heart, so tight, like a scroll, had opened when Arin kissed her. It had unfurled. If her heart were truly a scroll, she could burn it. It would become a tunnel of flame, a handful of ash. The secrets she had written inside herself would be gone. No one would know. ― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner’s Curse Music made her feel as […]

Familiar plot, new characters

Real Easy by Marie Rutkoski

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I’ve stumbled into a book time-warp – many books I’ve read recently seem to be set in the late 1990s. It’s an interesting choice – I wonder if the authors are deliberately trying to set their work in a space before the world changed with everything that happened between 9/11 and Covid. I grew up hearing the adults around me talk about  the “simpler time” of their own youth, and I think I’ve reached a stage where I can also reminisce about a relatively more […]

Stripped

Real Easy by Marie Rutkoski

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I sat on this review for most of the day, unsure of what to make of this book. I think I’m gonna land on the side of “good” and give it a 4-star seal of approval. I think a lot of people are coming into this looking at the subplot of crime involving a stripper and assume this is a Hustler$-esque pulp tale. It’s not that at all. Instead, it’s how people’s lives revolve around a popular stripper who has gone missing, including, but not limited […]

Most of this review is me being annoying.

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I need to screen my YA better. I think I’ve been doing better over the last couple of years, but this series slipped in. It’s not bad YA, far from it. But the author’s style is just not for me. Thankfully, this last book was better than the second one. Much more tightly focused and satisfying; it’s just, I constantly felt the way she was writing got in the way of my ability to enjoy her story. About 60% of the way through I started […]

This book has kissing, but also quite a lot of angst

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Spoiler warning: This is the third and concluding volume in this series. It’s going to be absolutely impossible for me to review this book without spoiling plot from the first and second book. Therefore, if you are not caught up, please skip this review and go start at the beginning – with The Winner’s Curse. Arin is mustering the Herrani into full-on war with the Valoran empire. Leading the Dacran forces that are going to aid them, is the sarcastic and hideously scarred Prince Roshar. […]

Sigh.

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Part of me liked this, and part of me thinks all the characters are idiots, and another part of me is just tired of reading about teenagers trying to run countries and junk like that. I have lots more parts of myself that have thoughts that are in conflict with one another, as well. For instance, the prose is lovely (even if it is in present tense, which: bleeeergh), but because it’s YA, nothing was developed as much as it should be, and plot developments just […]



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