Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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They Grow Up So Fast

Longshadow by Olivia Atwater

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The third novel in Atwater’s regency faerie tale trilogy is a sweet and sapphic delight perfect for Pride.  We had first met young Abigail in the novel Half A Soul– she is the adopted daughter of the Lord Sorcier Elias Wilder and his wife Theodora. The workhouse child has now grown into a mostly proper young lady who just wants to use her unusual magic. She sees the perfect opportunity to investigate the sudden deaths of several of her aristocratic peers. The most likely suspect […]

A hopeful future with robots and food

Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz

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If you need a story of chosen family and hope and good food, Automatic Noodle absolutely fits the bill. This is a delightful novella of a near-future where California has split from the United States after war, and part of California progressiveness was to give civil rights to human equivalent embodied intelligence (HEEI) robots. But those rights are limited – they’re not able to use a bank, own property, and there’s lots of prejudice against robots (very allegorical to American attitudes towards immigrants and marginalized […]

she’s got bollocks the size of blimps

The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy (Dearly Beloathed, #1) by Brigitte Knightley

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Thanks to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group | Ace for the ARC. It hasn’t affected the contents of my review. This book should not have worked! But, it really did. At least for me. This is an enemies to lovers slow burn romance set in an alternate Earth where magic is real. (Actual, real enemies, mind you, not just rivals or people who are annoyed at each other.) Aurienne is a gifted healer in an order of healers who is contacted by Osric, an eeeevil […]

Do not mistake this kindness. I simply want to be the one who breaks you.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

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His heart has a draft. It lets in light. It lets in storms. It lets in everything. ― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue Ever feel like running away from your life and forming an everlasting pact with a hot demon you meet in the woods on the day of your wedding? Addie didn’t feel like it either but that’s what happened. It’s 1729 in rural France. Addie is twenty-three, single, a dreamer, an artist, and has zero interest in succumbing to the […]

Grossly Misdirected Rage

Beloved Enemy by Amanda York

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Lanna, an English gentlewoman, falls in love with one young American but finds herself coerced into marriage with his dark-tempered friend, who seems intent on punishing her for reasons she does not understand. Look at that cover. Take a moment to appreciate that cover. I really miss old bodice-ripper style romance covers. Anyway, young, sheltered Lanna falls squarely in the trap of a dastardly devil with mommy issues who’s trying to get revenge on her father through her, except it turns out that Lanna is […]

“And he’ll burn our horizons / make no mistakes”

The Song of Achilles (2011) by Madeline Miller

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Spoiler alerts for a Bronze Age epic poem, I guess, also content note for discussion of sex in this review. I liked this but I didn’t love it. Homer’s Iliad is about blood and fire and gods and fate, about a war that made heroes and villains into legends that echoed through the ages (and sometimes switched their positions). The Song of Achilles is about one of these heroes, the titular Achilles, he of the heel, and his lover Patroclus, and it’s…sweet? And (rather surprisingly) […]



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