Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror

Pointe of Pride by Chloe Angyal

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I’ve been waiting for Pointe of Pride since shortly after Pas de Don’t came out. It did not disappoint. I had so much fun reading.  Carly and Nick have strong Elizabeth Bennet/Fitzwilliam Darcy vibes with their prides and their prejudices (masking insecurities) acting as barriers. They have a meet disaster and initially show each other their worst sides. And then Carly hears Nick talking about her in a less than complimentary way. Neither is in a good place emotionally at the start of the book. Carly feels like […]

A History of Royal Intermarriage and its Consequences

Royal Inbreeding and Other Maladies by Juliana Cummings

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Royalty was supposed to rule by divine right and meant to preserve their bloodline, but in their zeal to do so lay the seeds of the madness and maladies that plagued many royal houses. It’s always fun to read about mad royals. Removed by time and societal changes, they don’t feel real enough to be sorry for, and so you can fully indulge in ogling at the bizarre stories without shame. And with unlimited money and power at their disposal, there’s a lot of bizarre […]

A love note to romance novels and healthy masculinity

Fake Flame by Adele Buck

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In the past few years it has been very difficult for me to read and review new to me authors without a deadline imposed externally. As a result, I have a whole bunch of books I really want to read, but I struggle to focus on them unless they are an arc with a looming publication date. Anyway, I was thrilled to see Adele Buck’s Fake Flame on NetGalley because I’m pretty sure I own all her books and have read none of them. My […]

There is a day after calamity

You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian

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One of the most cruelly banal and gloriously affirming things about life is that it keeps on going after we’ve suffered something catastrophic. Cat Sebastian has written a string of dummies in love stories, but this is not that, though she remains strong on atmosphere and feeling. In You Should Be So Lucky, Eddie and Mark are each going through their own catastrophe when they meet. Eddie’s catastrophe is playing out in front of crowds and on TV. Mark’s is so private he can count on […]

Jackie Lau gets meta

Love, Lies, and Cherry Pie by Jackie Lau

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Jackie Lau has made her main character, Emily Hung, a LitFic author, which results in some meta commentary about the current state of publishing, especially for an Asian-Canadian author who is doing ok, but not charging up the charts. She’s got a three book contract, but she’s working two other jobs, and sharing an apartment. She’s feeling disrespected by her family, especially her mother, who keeps throwing Mark F’ing Chan at her head. After the two don’t hit it off at Emily’s youngest sister’s wedding, […]

An Adulterous Fiction in King Henry’s Court

The Tudors in Love: Passion and Politics in the Age of England's Most Famous Dynasty by Sarah Gristwood

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The various romantic travails of the Tudor dynasty have been well-covered in dramatic novels and shows in the centuries since they lived and died, but they too may have been influenced by earlier literature and tradition, specifically the idea of courtly love. In a market flooded with books concerning Tudor marriages, it’s hard for new releases to stand above the crowd. The Tudors in Love tries to carve its niche with the theme of courtly love, that fashionable alleged holdover from Arthurian times, and how […]



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