Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Made me want to re-read Six of Crows instead

To Steal from Thieves by M.K. Lobb

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Thank you to Netgalley and Little, Brown Books for this ARC. My opinions are my own. In an alternate version of Victorian London, magic exists and can be used to improve technology. It’s known as alchemology, and requires the magic-user to sacrifice some blood and life force to create the magical element known as primateria. It means that alchemologists tend to have shorter lifespans, which was certainly the case with Zaria Mendoza’s father. Now she’s an orphan struggling to complete her father’s outstanding commissions to […]

I should read more Susanna Kearsley

The King's Messenger by Susanna Kearsley

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StoryGraph Easy Reading Challenge 2025: All Alone – Read a stand-alone book Thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for this ARC. My opinions are my own. It is 1613 and Prince Henry, James I’s eldest son and heir has tragically died. Rumours whisper that it might not have been by natural causes. Queen Anna is distraught, and King James is determined to punish the guilty. Andrew Logan is one of the king’s messengers and he’s tasked with going to Scotland to apprehend Sir David Moray, […]

“Sometimes it didn’t matter if you broke. You kept going. You weren’t given a choice.” (Bingo)

When a Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher

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4.5 stars CBR16 Bingo: Dun Dun (From pretty much the first chapter, where Cordelia is “made obedient” there is a creeping sense of dread all the way through this novel) Cordelia knows her mother isn’t like other mothers. Other mothers can’t take over your limbs and puppet you, or force you to stay still and motionless for hours or days on end. Other mothers permit doors that can be closed in the house and let their daughters have friends. Other mothers don’t have a magical […]

Charlotte Holmes is accused of murder

A Ruse of Shadows by Sherry Thomas

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3.5 stars Smart Bitches Summer Bingo: the latest or last book in a series CBR16 Bingo: fan fiction This is book 8 in the series, and really not a good place to begin. Start with A Study in Scarlet Women. Charlotte Holmes, more used to solving murder mysteries, now finds herself questioned by the police, the main suspect in the murder of Lord Bancroft Ashburton. Inspector Threadles is concerned for her, but needn’t have worried, Ms Holmes isn’t going to let something as tiresome as […]

Frankenstein but plants and gay!

A Botanical Daughter by Noah Medlock

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I saw a reel on Instagram from the author talking about this book, and I was immediately sold. Frankenstein? Queer? Messy, messy characters? Sign me up! And this absolutely delivers on all fronts. The beginning of A Botanical Daughter is a little slow, but it perfectly sets the scene of Grimfern, an estate inside a greenhouse outside the closest village, and the three main characters – Gregor, botanist and lord of Grimfern; Simon, taxidermist and romantic partner to Gregor; and Jenny, local village girl whose […]

Beautiful, harrowing and oh so sad

In Memoriam by Alice Winn

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CBR16 Bingo: Liberate (our protagonists are fighting in World War I to keep the world safe from the Germans) Official plot summary, because I finished this book in early April: It’s 1914, and talk of war feels far away to Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates, safely ensconced in their idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. At seventeen, they’re too young to enlist, and anyway, Gaunt is fighting his own private battle – an all-consuming infatuation with his best friend, […]



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