Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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A story that grabs the characters literally (you figuratively)

Shadow Hills by Sean Ford

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While I don’t not think that Shadow Hills by Sean Ford is “OMG BEST BOOK EVER” there was something about it that “grabbed me.” The surface stories are a plague story and an environmental story. But there is also family dynamics at play for two of the main characters. Brothers Cal and Will’s story might be ending but sisters Annie and Dana are starting new. The town is a mess and the ooze (a tar like goop that devours/covers its victims) makes things worse. What […]

A prince, an aging dragon, and a mysterious maiden should have gone out for a drink, instead they did a little battle

Three Tasks for a Dragon by Eoin Colfer 

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I like a good fairy tale, legend, mythology, or folklore story. Therefore, when I saw the cover of  Three Tasks for a Dragon I figured it would be a fun story in that line of storytelling that would be about a dragon and his redemption story. And it is somewhat that; but it is also the loss of innocence, loss of youth, the greed for power, and the magic of true love and cherries. It was the illustrations of P. J. Lynch that kept pulling […]

Loss and Love

Always Sisters: A Story of Loss and Love by Saira Mir

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When you see a book with the title Always Sisters: A Story of Loss and Love a lot can go through your mind, as I know it did for me. Which was mostly what we were to deal with in the case of death. Disease? Accident? An older sibling taking their own life? Not to mention, is this going to be a straight forward or a “sappy” read. For me that made the process of reading this book perhaps more interesting than the book itself. […]

I appreciate the hard work that went into creating the book, though

Cruel Illusions by Margie Fuston

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I had seen the cover of Cruel Illusions as an online reader copy ages back. I saved the link but never got around to reading it, and then the link expired. No big deal, I’d get to it eventually, and recently I requested it via an interlibrary loan. Well, I almost wish I hadn’t. The cover lied. To a point. It would have (at the end) the roses and the main character dressed like that, but that romanticism was pushed all until the end (except […]

A boy and his sister have a fight

Terrible Horses by Raymond Antrobus

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With a name like Terrible Horses one would expect a story about horses who are bullies or mischievous or misbehaving. And in a way, they are. Only the terrible horses in this book by Raymond Antrobus are the narrator’s older sister, and not actual horses. Told from the point of view of the younger brother (who we will learn is different), when he and his sister fight, they do not use words, but just push and pull. And they hurt each other. Then he goes off to […]

Yo Ho Ho and Treasure

Danger in the Deep Sea (2) (OceanX Adventures) by Kate B. Jerome

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Kate B. Jerome has a series dealing with the OceanX expeditions, and book two is Danger in the Deep Sea (2) (OceanX Adventures). As an 8 to (young-medium) 12-year-old I would have devoured this book/series. I did not realize this was book two when I “picked up” the online reader copy. And while it can be a stand-alone read, it probably would have helped to read book one first. The adventures of the story are unbelievable, yet, probably plausible. Our main character is a treasure […]



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