Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

“Happy wedding”, Evemer said. “I got you this door.” (Bingo)

A Taste of Gold and Iron by Alexandra Rowland

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CBR16 Bingo: Golden Gold in the title and gold as a pivotal part of the plot. Also pretty much all of the central characters are solid gold. Kadou is the younger brother of the sultan of Arasht, and is delighted that she’s just given birth to a healthy baby, putting him further down the line of succession. Unfortunately, the baby’s father, a powerful ambassador at court, believes Kadou to be jealous and a threat to both his baby niece and his sister. Nothing could be […]

Is there anything more we can ask of a romance than for it to make us feel swoony? 

Georgie All Along by Kate Clayborn

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Once upon a time, I told a story about myself. And maybe if I can make some of that story come true—Buzzard’s Neck, The Bend, whatever—I’ll be closer to writing a new one.   Much like how I’m finding younger heroines less relatable, I think I’ve also reached the point in my reading life where perfect/mostly perfect main characters are no longer that interesting to me.  True, the saintly, virginal, personifications of perfection that populated many of the books that blooded me (as the folks […]

I Loathed This Book. Hostile Review Follows

The Au Pair Affair by Tessa Bailey

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Is this grumpy/sunshine romance or old coot/youth? Do vegans wear leather skirts? How much does an average hockey player weigh? Why does she keep cooking them dinner? How is this a rational custody arrangement? Keep reading to find out. From Amazon: Tallulah is smart, vivacious, and studying to be a marine biologist. She’s also twenty-six and broke. So when Burgess, a battle-scarred hockey veteran and newly single dad, offers her a job as his live-in nanny, she jumps at the opportunity to get paid while […]

A Spoooky Gothic Romance

The Cruel Dark by Bea Northwick

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You’re promising me some traumatic amnesia, a giant scary estate, and possible ghosts and/or fairy shenanigans? Yes please thank you Bea Northwick! A perfect read for the week before Halloween. Millicent Foxboro is alone in the world. Having overcome a difficult childhood and amnesia that mysteriously erased four years of her life, she now craves stability. When an unexpected job offer arrives with a ridiculously large salary Millicent feels she must take it. She arrives at the once grand but now overgrown estate with its […]

Disney Reimagined for Grown-Ups

Tangled Up in You by Christina Lauren

If the Shoe Fits by Julie Murphy

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The first Meant To Be book I ever got was If the Shoe Fits by Julie Murphy. That’s because it was the first Meant To Be book at all, and as a religious reader of the Twisted Tales, I was curious what an adult contemporary line from Disney would look like. Of course, like many other things, it fell behind, and it wasn’t until a year or so later that I actually picked up a Meant To Be book—and this time it was By the Book by Jasmine […]

Cats don’t really feature prominently in this narrative (Bingo)

Touch Not the Cat by Mary Stewart

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Nowhere Book Bingo: From the decade I was born (1970s) Smart Bitches Book Bingo: Published in 2000 or earlier (first published 1976) CBR16 Bingo: Vintage (published 48 years ago) Briony Ashley is working in Portugal when she recieves word that her father has died, in what appears to be a hit-and-run accident. Her father didn’t die instantly, but had time to ramble some strange and slightly mysterious things, among them a warning that Briony needs to be careful. She goes home to what is now […]



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