Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Plant Puns and Getting Spicy

Violet Thistelwaite is Not a Villain Anymore by Emily Krempholtz

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There’s a blurb on the back of Violet Thistlewaite is Not a Villain Anymore that says that this is a “cozy fantasy with plant magic, love, and second chances”. That’s generally accurate, except that this feels more on the romance side of romantasy, and things get spicier than I was expecting from something with “cozy” in the description. That’s not necessarily a complaint, but it might be a little bit about expectations. Basically, Violet was known as the Thornwitch, the powerful right hand of an […]

It’s Not That Deep, Except That It Is

Female Fantasy by Iman Hariri-Kia

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Last week I sat down to read Iman Hariri-Kia’s new novel, Female Fantasy. I stayed up until 2 a.m. to finish it, and I don’t want to review it so much as just hand it out. You get a copy, and you get a copy, and you and you and you get copies. Everybody on BookTok gets a copy. Most importantly, everybody who’s ever looked down their nose at romance in general or romantasy in particular gets a copy.  Everyone can read it, have whatever […]

Magical Girls Grown Up

The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry by C.M. Waggoner

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Bingo 24: Swap Free Space for Diaspora Free Space invoked because I don’t have anything specific in mind for the Diaspora square and time is not on my side. I picked up The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry for the title. No other reason. Turns out this is actually book 2 in a series, but that doesn’t actually matter, as this story is pretty stand alone as far as I could tell. A lot is classic fantasy and romance tropes getting mixed up. Sometimes there’s […]

Insubstantial Fluff

A Fellowship of Librarians & Dragons by J. Penner

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Bingo 21: Review I may have already had A Fellowship of Librarians and Dragons on my TBR before looking up reviews, but turns out I had a pretty similar reaction to Bjornsnipe: https://cannonballread.com/2025/10/a-fellowship-of-librarians-dragons-adenashire-book-two-bjornsnipe/ This series, not totally surprisingly, appears to be let’s take a core group, and then pair everyone off, one novel at a time. There’s not a lot of substance, and no attention to realism. This is pure wish fulfillment, where everything turns out  fine in the end, romantically, family-wise, dragon baby-wise, friend-wise, […]

GBBO Romantasy Meringue

A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic by J. Penner

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Bingo 15 :White Notice the color of the title text? And few splashes of said color elsewhere? Ok then. However, if you want to be more creative about it, white is often represented as the absence of color, which could be argued to be a metaphor for the total absence of substance in this novel. So, there’s that too. Now to be absolutely clear, the absence of substance is exactly what I needed when I picked this up. I needed a palate cleasner from something […]

Cozy romantasy in which game night is the wildest part

Tea You at the Altar by Rebecca Thorne

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Bingo 3: TBR I recently saw book four in the tetralogy at an airport bookstore, and realized that I still had book 3 on my TBR shelf (literally, physical book on actual shelf). Tea You at the Altar is book 3 of the Tomes and Tea series, and like the two previous volumes is a cozy romantasy. Kind of fitting actually, since I’m pretty sure I picked up book 1 in an airport as well. This time, the story is less about the tea and […]



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