I’d seen The Duchess Deal (2017) by Tessa Dare on some Cannonball reviews, and it looked interesting. I’d learned that Dare changed details about her love interest after Trump’s election because her alpha hero was rubbing her the wrong way. I appreciated the small nods to progressive feminist ideals throughout the book, the often funny banter between the leads, and the way she played with typical romantic tropes with her story. I also liked how the Duke and Emma slowly began to trust each other, but the […]
The best way to find a murderer
The Likeness (2008) is the second in Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad Series. I read the first book, In the Woods back in 2015. So far I’ve found these books both impressive and disturbing. They are relatively long and complex murder mysteries that dig deep into the psychological toll that these cases take on the detectives. Cassie Maddox is back from In the Woods. After the disastrous ending to her last murder investigation, she transferred to Domestic Violence, never spoke to her old partner again, and began to date […]
High school drama with vampires
Last year got a little hairy when I had to write almost all my reviews for the year in the last three weeks of December. It wasn’t much fun, so I promised myself that this year I would get back on track. Unless I’m traveling, I will not finish my next book until I’ve reviewed the previous one. That way, I should only ever have one review to catch up on. I hope. I’m starting this year off with Richelle Mead’s Bloodlines (2011). It’s the first book […]
Murder from the perspective of a fetus
I am a huge fan of Ian McEwan, and I’ve read a number of books by him. So when I saw that he had another one out, I went and picked it up. I’m not sure what to say about Nutshell (2016). It held my attention, but I couldn’t buy into the entire conceit, so I was left with the feeling that it was odd. The protagonist of this story is a fetus in its mother’s womb (I assumed it was a boy because it sounded like […]



