Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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A light and fun read to round out the year

Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen

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As I was looking for the last reads of my completed cannonball, only one more to go after this one (!!!) I wanted something light and fun to enjoy through the holiday season and I was positively delighted to discover I had this unread Sarah Addison Allen delight on my bookshelf. I discovered her early in her career and managed to go to a book event when I was living in Tennessee where I was the last attendee and remember being completely tongue-tied about it […]

“When you’re happy for yourself, it fills you. When you’re happy for someone else, it pours over. It was almost too bright to watch.”

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Throwback Thursday Bingo Square.   Goodreads tells me I first read Garden Spells in 2010.  (Or maybe that’s when I first signed up for Goodreads, who knows?) Either way, it was a while back.  But I’ve been in transition again (in two houses, in different rooms now in each house), so I’ve been moving a lot of my things, packing others up for storage and (painfully) whittling back my bookcases, for space reasons, and the “keeper book” criteria was as stringent as I could manage (which is […]

Sweet Sequel to a Sweet Family Debut

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I first fell for the Waverly Family in Allen’s debut novel, “Garden Spells.” Small town living, sisters, baking, luuurv, and a magical apple tree that throws apples at innocent bystanders. What’s not to love? I knew that the sequel would be a good read for the winter time, something light fluffy, and a little warm for the cold days, and it delivered. The Waverly sisters have both made their way home and are living happy lives. The book picks up about 10 years after the […]

Practically Practical Magic

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Sarah Addison Allen is a delight. A little backstory regarding my first reading selection of the new year: I just moved from the balmy south to the chilly Midwest and am experiencing my first real winter in about 8 years. I reached out to the Cannonball Read hive mind for reads that would either raise my spirits (light and fluffy things to warm my heart) or create a sense of schadenfreude (people having miserable winters, or miserable life happenings) and someone mentioned Allen, who was […]

Those Waverleys are back

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So we’re back in Bascom, North Carolina, with another minor mystery for the Waverleys to solve. This time, it’s just before First Frost — a magical time for these witchy sisters when their enchanted apple tree starts stirring up all sorts of things. Everybody wants something — with no clear way to get it. “She couldn’t change who she was, and she no longer wanted to, even if she could. She knew that who you are is a stone set deep inside you. You can spend […]

Walls of Water is one hell of a name for a town

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Another Southern mystery/romance/fantasy from Sarah Addison Allen. I need to not read these back to back — they tend to run together, and I run out of things to say beyond “these are so sweet and cute and fun!”. “We’re connected, as women. It’s like a spiderweb. If one part of that web vibrates, if there’s trouble, we all know it, but most of the time we’re just too scared, or selfish, or insecure to help. But if we don’t help each other, who will?” So fancy […]



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