Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


The Heart Principle grabbed mine and didn’t let go

The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang

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Helen Hoang’s The Heart Principle was everything I wanted and more. Our heroine Anna Sun is going through it. She is a violinist stuck in a loop after a performance video goes viral on YouTube. With every practice session, she wants to replicate that moment with precision. She ends up burned out and unable to finish the song. She is attempting therapy to find a breakthrough. Later that day, her boyfriend asks to “see other people” as an excuse to know that he’s ready to […]

My love for Seanan McGuire continues

Late Eclipses by Seanan McGuire

Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire

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I’m slowly working my way through Seanan McGuire’s body of work. Her books are exactly the kind of urban fantasy I love. She has a way of writing witty heroines who put their lives on the line for others. I decided to put the InCryptid series into the rotation. I bought the first book on audiobook on sale ages ago. I also have been desperate to read novels I already own. It was a win-win. Discount Armageddon introduces us to Verity Price. She comes from a long […]

Would you go undercover and infiltrate a futuristic mob to save your sibling? I’d have to think really hard…

False Hearts by Laura Lam

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How’s this for a synopsis: a pair of conjoined twins escape the cult they’ve been raised in, are surgically separated and given new hearts, and learn to live in near-future San Francisco, until one of them is arrested for murder and the other has to go undercover as her sister to infiltrate the mob that’s trying to mine people’s dreams and prove her innocence. Whew! It’s a fun ride. Taema and Tila lived on an island in a cult called the Hearth, run by a […]

Getting Steamy in San Francisco: #CannonBookClub2022!

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

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Fog rolling in off the Pacific! Illicit kisses in smoky clubs! Steamed buns filled with jammy pork and spices! What can I say about Last Night at the Telegraph Club that Malinda Lo didn’t already say with total confidence and care when she wrote the book? She felt as if speaking would ruin everything-then they’d have to put a name to this feeling between them, this rapidly growing heat and longing that made the sliver of air between their bodies charged with electricity. She could swear […]

Be Sure To Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair

Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway by Sara Gran

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Unlike Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, I wasn’t able to down this one quickly like I thought I would. I had to sit with certain parts of it. It’s more personal and raw than the first one…and just as good, if not better. It’s tough to describe Gran’s writing style. It’s this mix of absurdism, postmodernism and hardboiled. Usually, people who write that way are trying way too hard. For Gran, it’s effortless. And it makes every dialogue exchange an adventure. Sometimes, I […]

Would you like a do-over of college?

Haunted Heroine by Sarah Kuhn

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Spoiler warning! This is the fourth novel in the series Heroine Complex and this review may contain spoilers for earlier books in the series. I suspect it will also be a lot more satisfying for someone who’s read the preceding three books. Begin with Heroine Complex.    Official book description: Everything in Evie Tanaka’s life is finally perfect. As a badass superheroine, she defends San Francisco from demon invasion on the regular. Her relationships with superhero partner Aveda Jupiter, little sister Bea, and hot, half-demon husband Nate have […]



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