Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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A wonderful Regency romp where nearly everyone is queer

Something Fabulous by Alexis Hall

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4.5 stars Official book description: Valentine Layton, the Duke of Malvern, has twin problems: literally. It was always his father’s hope that Valentine would marry Miss Arabella Tarleton. But, unfortunately, too many novels at an impressionable age have caused her to grow up…romantic. So romantic that a marriage of convenience will not do and after Valentine’s proposal she flees into the night determined never to set eyes on him again. Arabella’s twin brother, Mr. Bonaventure “Bonny” Tarleton, has also grown up…romantic. And fully expects Valentine […]

A road trip with a difference

Becoming Dinah by Kit de Waal

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Seventeen-year old Dinah has spent almost all her life on a religious commune somewhere in Northumberland (in northern England), being educated at home with the other children. Only recently has she gone to a ‘proper’ school, and her feelings of culture shock and confusion are convincingly drawn. When we first meet her, something awful has happened (which de Waal delays telling us about), and Dinah is taking advantage of her mother’s absence on a Women’s Retreat to reinvent herself as ‘Ishmael’, cutting off her long […]

Find yourself in the rhythm and the ride

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig

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In the late 1960s, a narrator who very closely resembles author Robert M. Pirsig embarks on a summer motorcycle trip with his adolescent son and some friends, traveling from their home in Minneapolis to San Francisco. Twinned with descriptions of their physical journey across the great plains is Pirsig’s descriptions of his philosophical journey, his theory of life as analogized through his relationship with his motorcycle. For the narrator/author, the physical act of motorcycle maintenance, the attention to detail, the willingness to devote time and […]

Two Scottish bozos in a camper van.

Clanlands: Whisky, Warfare, and a Scottish Adventure Like No Other by Sam Heughan & Graham McTavish

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I have not seen the STARZ TV show this book is the account of making, but this book (and the audiobook specifically) was a pretty good time. (STARZ insisted on naming the TV show Men in Kilts, but its original name was Clanlands, as this book makes pretty clear without actually stating it.) If you want something extremely goofy, spotted through with Scottish history, this is your book. The book is told by both Graham and Sam in alternating POV sections as they narrate the […]

A Road Trip Romance

Hairpin Curves by Elia Winters

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Elia Winters is a new to me author, but yet another of those delightful people I follow on Twitter. I heard good things about Hairpin Curves before seeing it on NetGalley. It was a fun road trip romance read. I received this as an arc from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Megan and Scarlett were friends as teens, but that ended when Scarlett ghosted Megan after they made plans to be college roommates. When another childhood friend invites them to her wedding in Canada, […]

Being a teenager is hard enough without the threat of total annihilation looming on the horizon.

I Hope You Get This Message by Farah Naz Rishi

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Jesse, Cate, and Adeem are all just trying to survive- even before they catch wind of an alien planet’s message to earth: you will all be destroyed in seven days. Our main trio holds a treasure trove of teen torments between them: absent parents, the desire to be loved, the inability to accept care, the need to be anywhere other than where they are. Everyone is attempting to find someone who does not necessarily want to be found, and I was worried that we’d being […]



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