Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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This SHOULD have been a duology

Renegades by Marissa Meyer

Archenemies by Marissa Meyer

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The Renegades series by Marissa Meyer was supposed to be a duology. The first book, Renegades, tells the story of Gatlin City, a far distant US (probably) where people with super powers started appearing, and chaos quickly descended. A group of anarchists ruled the city, with the help of gangs. (It is unclear if members of the gangs have powers, or are just not nice people.) The Anarchists are overthrown by a group with powers (called prodigies) known as the Renegades. At the start of […]

Maybe Don’t Bind Your Fate to First Hottie You Meet

Smoke & Summons (The Numina Series, Book 1) by Charlie N. Holmberg

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I’m choosy in my reading–unless of course the book is free (as this one is, for Amazon Prime members through January). The pretty flaming horse on the cover is Ireth, a powerful being from another plane that can be temporarily summoned into a human vessel. You can probably guess the requirements: good health, no piercings to mar one’s wholeness, a summoning tattoo in an extinct language, and…virginity. (Because it’s YA!) Our human vessel is eighteen year old Sandis, the favorite slave of an underworld kingpin whose gun-toting grafters […]

..things that everybody wants: to be successful, to have friends, to be loved. To be seen.

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Full disclosure before you read this review: I cracked this book open on the heels of a very meaty, thought-provoking NOVEL of many, many pages. I haven’t reviewed that one yet, but it’s coming. Having wrapped my brain around something that it had to chew on over the course of a week or so and then transitioning to this book may not have been the greatest idea. This was my book club’s choice for this month. Everyone was looking for something light to round out […]

Even a Gilded Cage is Still a Cage

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Y’ALL, THIS BOOK IS SO GOOD! I heard the author, Dhonielle Clayton, interviewed on a Slate podcast one day (I can’t remember which one) and from the conversation thought her new book, The Belles, sounded interesting. I needed a new book, and I love supporting newer authors, so I figured I would check it out. I am so very, very glad I did. Clayton has written a Young Adult book that deals with consumption culture, the Cult of Beauty, the exploitation of power, the power […]

Always Mañana. Tomorrow.

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Young Adult fiction has been in heavy rotation in my reading for a good number of years now. Now that my kid is in middle school, I have a lot of really great books to pass on to him, but I have found that the bulk of  it (aside from vampirey melodrama which I am sure he will have zero interest in) are dystopian trilogies. He flew through the Westerfeld Leviathan books (if anyone can recommend steampunk books appropriate for a middle schooler, let me […]

All I want is some truth.

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  This book took me awhile to really get into. It definitely wasn’t bad, it just didn’t suck me in the way I expected to. The description, a young female spy held prisoner and tortured by the Nazis, gave me a much different impression of what this book would be. At it’s core, Code Name Verity is the story of a powerful female friendship and what one friend will do to save another. It was only about midway through the book when the perspective shifted […]



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