Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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The Conductors by Nicole Glover

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I have a coworker who says “I don’t want to get out over my skis” a lot. I had never heard that expression before, but this book really feels like it encapsulates the phrase. The ideas are interesting, and the two main characters are great, but it feels like the story and the writing never quite live up to the concept. This is an alternate history about the Underground Railroad and the uncertain times after the Civil War – except with magic. The story starts […]

Permanently Marked by the Past

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This is another one of those novels I have been meaning to read in order to branch out, and Book Riot’s Read Harder challenge provided that final push to turn it from a vague intention to a reality. While Hester’s father was descended from a free family tracing their freedom back to the Revolution, Hester was born into slavery.  Her father sold himself into slavery to be with her mother, a slave in South Carolina. Unfortunately, the master he arranged his deal with died only […]

Just say yes!

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There are things Beverly Jenkins does really, really well, and two things that I like much less about her work, that were all evident first when I read Topaz and appeared here in Indigo. So let’s get this compliment sandwich going! This book is about Hester Wyatt, a freed former slave and operator on Michigan’s Underground Railroad. She’s decidedly non-romantic after seeing how passion and love led her father to take on the shackles of slavery to be closer to her and her mother, only […]

Another historical romance, with the Underground Railroad

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4.5 stars Hester Wyatt was born as a slave, because her father, originally a free man, sold himself into slavery to be with her mother. When she was born, her mother severed part of her finger to make her more easy to identify, and Hester was found and taken in by her aunt Katherine, who taught her to read and write and raised her as her own. Now she lives in her dead aunt’s house, a valuable member of Michigan’s Underground Railroad. One night, she’s […]



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