Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Cozy mystery, Singapore style

Aunty Lee's Delights (Singaporean Mystery #1) by Ovidia Yu

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I was in Singapore for a week so I decided to look up Singaporean books to expand my understanding a little bit. It needed to be something I could read on an airplane, and it needed to be very Singapore. I landed on Aunty Lee’s Delights after seeing Ovidia Yu’s name come up in several “Must-Read: Singapore” lists.  Aunty Lee is an established lady of a certain age and class in Singapore. She’s also a bit — well, maybe more than a bit — of […]

Love in the Quiet Places

A Daddy for Her Twins by Scarlet Wilson

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Three years after the death of her husband, single mom and physiotherapist Madison must figure out if she is ready to move on with the new pediatric doctor Fletch. I don’t know if Harlequin’s been publishing a spate of single parent romances lately or I’m just reading more of them. Sometimes they can be too saccharine or the kids might seem to have been written by someone who’s never met a kid, but when done right it adds another dimension to the romance. This is […]

“On a little street in Singapore We’d meet beside a lotus-covered door”

The Frangipani Tree Mystery by Ovidia Yu

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  This book is what I call a “cozy-ish mystery.” It’s not an examination of the darkest parts of humanity, nor does it take place entirely in a knitting shop in a cozy New England hamlet. It’s just about the perfect thing for me when I’m feeling overwhelmed by the world or my previous read or both. The murder still feels important to the story without getting you bogged down in misery. This is the first in the Crown Colony series and I’ve added the […]

Crazy Rich Asians

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

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Glamour magazine said it best in their review, “It’s impossible not to get sucked into this satirical novel.” Crazy Rich Asians is simply fun entertainment. I can totally see why they made a movie based on this book – the fashion, the architecture, the opulence, OH MY! Now, I can’t wait to see it. Also, when I started the book, I assumed it was a stand-alone novel. I had no idea it was the first in a trilogy. As soon as I ended on a juicy, […]

“I take fifty milligrams of amitriptyline every night, and then an extra ten milligrams of Ambien if I really want to sleep through the night. Sometimes I add a Lunesta, and if that doesn’t work, I get out the Valium—”

Crazy Rich Asians (Crazy Rich Asians, #1) by Kevin Kwan

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I had fun with this and I will be reading the sequels, but for me this is one of the few cases where the movie did it better. I saw the movie first, which I try not to do for the most part, but I’m honestly glad I did it that way. The actors really brought a lot of dimension to their characters that was lacking in the book, and the movie also had a much more clear arc than the book, which doesn’t focus […]

“There is the same unforgettable alchemy to being dislikeable as to being universally loved.”

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I found myself in a really spectacular bookstore last spring, and all I wanted to do was buy ALL THE BOOKS, and then maybe take all the books to a nearby cafe and read them and drink coffee and watch people until it was too dark to read, and then do that every day.  I could not, sadly, do all of those things, so I consoled myself by buying only two books, and then reading them in the waiting room in the hospital, which was […]



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