Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Lightning Strike

What is Love by Jen Comfort

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Jen Comfort became an autobuy author for me when I read Midnight Duet, her utterly bananas and brilliant gender-flipped retelling of The Phantom of the Opera. Her banter is top notch. Her characters are substantial. Teddy Ferguson falls in love with Maxine Hart after she steals his lucky donut, takes one bite, corrects his trivia factoid, and then throws the rest of the donut away like a beautiful agent of chaos. I also fell in love with Maxine at that moment. There is, I think, […]

The Nazi Handmaid’s Tale

Widowland by C.J. Carey

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In a 1953 England under the control of German forces, life is good for Rose Ransom, a member of the privileged Geli class – or at least as good as life can be for a woman in the oppressive regime. But when she is given the task of infiltrating Widowland in search of possible subversives, she comes to learn she might have more power than she always thought. The premise of this book caught my eye immediately. I haven’t really read alternate history books before, […]

“Separately, each cloud can block the wind. Together, we might determine its flow.”

Kill Her Twice by Stacey Lee

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Sisters May and Gemma Chow are working hard to keep their family afloat while their father is away being treated for tuberculosis. When they discover the body of Lulu Wong, a former classmate and rising Hollywood star on the outskirts of Chinatown, they set out to solve the mystery of her death. I’m always on the lookout for historical fiction that centers the experience of people who were marginalized during the era of the setting, because to see history through their eyes is usually completely […]

“My name’s Willa, and I believe I have your dog.”

Do Me a Favor by Cathy Yardley

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Do Me a Favor begins as all great books do, with a dog. Okay, that’s probably not true of all great books, but this one does begin with Willa finding a dog in her garage during a thunderstorm. The dog, named Noodle, belongs to Hudson’s semi-adult son. Hudson comes to get him (a couple of times because Noodle loves a garage adventure) and Hudson and Willa start to connect. I really enjoyed Cathy Yardley’s Ponto Beach series, but I am loving her books with older […]

American Pastimes

Game Show Confidential by Boze Hadleigh

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Game shows have a surprisingly long history, starting with their roots in radio quiz shows in the 1930s to today’s glut of revivals, with plenty of drama and scandals along the way. It occurred to me over the course of reading this book that I’ve not actually seen many American game shows beyond Jeopardy – I was more likely to pass my time watching Telugu game shows aired in the early afternoon with my grandmother during summer holidays. But the appeal of game shows in […]

A Lineage of Madness

The Noh Mask Mystery by Akimitsu Takagi

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An aspiring mystery writer and his childhood friend must join forces to solve the mystery of a string of deaths in a prominent Japanese family that may be the result of an inherited curse. I’ve always enjoyed reading works in translation – they seem to bring you closer to the place in which they are set – but I definitely haven’t read many genre works. As such, I was intrigued by the prospect of this locked room murder mystery, written in 1949 but never before […]



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