Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


I wish this book had accompanying videos with the various dance routines

Take the Lead by Alexis Daria

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3.5 stars Smart Bitches Summer Bingo: Reality TV CBR16 Bingo: Disco (so much dancing in this book) Gina Morales has been a dancer for four seasons of the popular reality dancing show The Dance Off, but she’s never even made it to the finals. She dreams of stardom but doesn’t like the behind-the-scenes machinations on the show. She may be a beautiful Latina woman, but refuses to be roped into any kind of ‘Showmance’. She wants to be taken seriously as a dancer and choreographer. […]

“The theme of the story is finding yourself”

Take the Lead by Alexis Daria

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I read Alexis Daria’s Take the Lead after seeing it on Entertainment Weekly’s best romances of 2017. Take the Lead was Daria’s debut novel and has now been somewhat reworked for a rerelease. While I did not have the time to reread the earlier version, my impression is that she’s taken an already good book, tightened it up, added a little, and made it better. Gina Morales is a professional dancer on the reality dance competition. Going into her fifth season on the show, she has […]

Dance partners on reality TV show fall in love.

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I wanted to like this so much more than I actually did. Like, trade secret here, even though I do not enjoy most reality TV, I realllllly enjoy reading about characters in books or stories (and fanfic, let’s be honest) being on reality TV competitions. (This is similar to me not really liking sports, but loving stories about people who play sports. Why? Shrug.) Take the Lead is Alexis Daria’s first novel, and I think you can tell. It was very uneven for me. One minute I’d […]

Among the Year’s Best? Maybe

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Cannonballer kdm posted Entertainment Weekly’s list of the best romances of 2017. Some people (Prolixity Julien) found it unconscionable that Lucy Parker’s Pretty Face was not on the list (the link leads to Mrs. Julien’s review). I was surprised that I had read only 2 books on the list, though I only remembered reading one initially. The two books on the list I had read were Alyssa Cole’s An Extraordinary Union and Tessa Dare’s The Duchess Deal. I read and enjoyed Tessa Dare’s book, but had nothing to […]



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