Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

A witch is simply a woman who listens to her intuition

First Witches Club by Maisey Yates

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If you’re looking for a cozy-ish read about women learning how to live for themselves and get revenge, this is it. We meet each of our three main characters fairly early in the book, but it’s basically Nora’s story. Her husband has just left her for a wellness retreat in Chile to “find himself”. Nora tries to convince herself for a lot of the book that her marriage is fine, and she’s just helping out her new friends with their failing marriages. She reconnects with […]

A promising start to a new series

Witch Season by Julia Bianco

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CBR18 Bingo: Refuge (The Aestas coven works hard to be a safe haven and refuge for young witches who have snapped and would normally be ostracised by other witches) Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for this ARC. This book is on sale now. There are two types of witches (in this world, all magic users are called witches, regardless of gender). The ones who are born from families with established magic, who grew up as part of a coven, and who are […]

Female friendship

Rebis: Born and Reborn by Irene Marchesini and Carla Roncalli Di Montorio

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Because I have really wanted to read the graphic novel Rebis: Born and Reborn by Irene Marchesini and Carla Roncalli Di Montorio for a year now, I think I had too high hopes for it. The concept was good, but there was some execution of the final results for me. It was an interesting look at the concept of a woman’s place and how she is shunned, blamed, and used as the scapegoat when she does not “obey” the rules. This flows into how a […]

Magical Historical Fiction

The Antidote by Karen Russel

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From the afterword/Lost Land Acknowledgement by Dr. James Riding In: “The Antidote uses fantastical conceits to illuminate the holes in people’s private and collective memories, the willful omissions passed down generation to generation, and the myths that have been used by the U.S. government and White settlers to justify crimes against the citizens of Native Nations and the theft of Native lands.” And the author uses those fantastical conceits very well. The Antidote is a beautifully written, sad, interesting, and clever novel. It’s a fantastic […]

Is it magic or summer love?

Witchful Thinking by Celestine Martin

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Witchful Thinking introduces us to Freya Grove, a seaside small town in New Jersey. Kindhearted, curvy Black teacher Lucy has lived here her whole life, as have her sisters and cousins. She is a witch and has a little tea-reading business on the side. She is feeling unaccomplished with her high school reunion looming at the end of summer. She unexpectedly runs into her former crush and friend, Alex, who is a very handsome Black merman. His resurgence kicks her overthinking brain into high gear. […]

Witches and Nazis and Ghosts – Oh My

A Resistance of Witches by Morgan Ryan

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The author definitely has potential and I’d be curious to see what else she does but I’d say the novel is a solid 3 – really interesting ideas but there were plot points that could have been fleshed out more to make it stronger. Other themes and plot were very much conventional (mother-daughter conflicts, the old ways vs the new ways, and I don’t think anyone is going to be surprised by the twist) but within that, there are some very emotional and moving scenes. […]



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