Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

My Kind of Western

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

by Leave a Comment

This novella has been sitting on my kindle forever and I don’t know why it took me this long to read it but I’m so glad I finally did! I think I’ve talked before about my struggles with short fiction, I always want more. This one wasn’t any different. I don’t know if reading any of Gailey’s other novellas would help clear up some of the background on this story. It’s set in a dystopian America torn apart by war with most people reduced to […]

The Limits of a Good Metaphor

King of Immortal Tithe by Ben Alderson

by Leave a Comment

Listen: it’s fundamentally really tricky to pull off a romance when the premise for their connection is that this is the ONLY person who can physically touch you and not die. Our basics here are fairly simple: our ingenue protagonist is abducted in a kind of marriage trade to a fae prince whose touch drains people’s life force, causing instant death. Except it doesn’t work on our hero. Possibly because he’s already dying. And that creates an instant connection. But that premise only goes so far, right? […]

There is Such a Thing as Having TOO MUCH of a Type!

Lord of Eternal Night by Ben Alderson

by 2 Comments

Okay, so, full disclosure: I’m trying to burn through my Kindle Unlimited backlog list, because I’m cancelling my subscription next month, because I hate a price hike. (The new fees system also charges readers more to pay authors less, which is corporate greed at its finest. But, theoretically, this review isn’t supposed to be my Rant About the Evils of Capitalism, but I digress). Lord of Eternal Night is your typical monster-y romance: ingenue protagonist gets sacrificed to the monster, finds out they’re not so monsterous after all, […]

The Question of Soulmates

Wolfsong by T.J. Klune

by 9 Comments

The thing about Wolfsong is that it’s a keen example of the best thing about paranormal romance as a genre: it’s a way to explore a deep corner of human nature by coming at it sideways, through a fantasy concept that magnifies the details. This one, in particular, is about what it might mean to have a soulmate. People give this book some flak for the age gap – and I see that, and it didn’t need to be quite this wide, but I can […]

Sharp-Dressed Cats, Angels, Murder, Noir that Stands Apart

Even Though I Knew the End by CL Polk

by 2 Comments

I feel like I came to Even Though I Knew the End by CL Polk late even though it’s still a relatively new release. I also started it, had to pause because I had to read for work on deadline, and then picked up where I left off… but only after my required reading made it abundantly clear that, by comparison, this book is amazing. That said, it moved slower for me than others and perhaps that affected my overall rating for it. This is a novella that […]

An Emotional, Vital Story

Only This Beautiful Moment by Abdi Nazemian

by Leave a Comment

I don’t know that I know how to talk about this book except that GOSH it’s amazing and good and powerful and I am so glad it exists and I can’t wait for more people to have the chance to read it! At its core, Only This Beautiful Moment is a story of family and community, of fighting for your beliefs and also learning who you are and want to be. Told across three generations, Moud, Saeed, and Bobby are each discovering their history and […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo