Cannonball Read 14

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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About chilejamie

CBR12 participant

chilejamie's Reviews:

> FAQ Home
> Articles by: chilejamie

Aggressively fine one-sitting read

Someone We Know by Shari Lapena

July 10, 2020 by chilejamie Leave a Comment

A woman goes missing in a close-knit neighborhood in Shari Lapena’s Someone We Know. Her husband is clearly a psychopath, but then again, the woman has committed the grave sin of being an attractive flirt. Shortly into the novel, the woman is found in the trunk of her own car, kicking off a a pretty straightforward whodunnit. Told mostly from the perspective of a neighbor of the murdered woman, the plot adds a wrinkle right off the bat: the neighbor’s son has been breaking into […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: #mystery, cbr12bingo, Shari Lapena

chilejamie's CBR12 Review No:7 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: #mystery, cbr12bingo, Shari Lapena ·
· 0 Comments

Way darker than the classic Joshua Jackson vehicle “Skulls”

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

March 4, 2020 by chilejamie 5 Comments

Secret societies and magic have existed at Yale for centuries…didn’t you know? Don’t worry, most of the students don’t either. But the members of the secret societies are elbow deep in literal blood magic that keeps their alumni wealthy, famous, well-connected, well-liked….you name it (Bush the second’s election makes SO MUCH more sense now). Who keeps this kind of power in check? College students aren’t exactly famous for their good judgment. Enter Lethe House, the ninth house, created as a watchdog to keep the other […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: female-centric thrillers, Leigh Bardugo, magic, mystery, secret society, thriller, Yale

chilejamie's CBR12 Review No:6 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: female-centric thrillers, Leigh Bardugo, magic, mystery, secret society, thriller, Yale ·
Rating:
· 5 Comments

Less thriller, more meditation

American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson

February 7, 2020 by chilejamie Leave a Comment

American Spy opens with a literal bang, the way most spy novels do. But then it becomes something different – more of a memoir, more of a reckoning with the past that led to the opening shot. Marie, the titular spy, is the lone black female employee in her FBI field office. Attacked in her home, she flees New York to her mother’s country of Martinique; meanwhile, she reflects on her girlhood with her sister, now deceased, and her time as a spy during the […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: Africa, FBI, lauren wilkinson, Race, spy, women

chilejamie's CBR12 Review No:5 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: Africa, FBI, lauren wilkinson, Race, spy, women ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

Welcome to the funhouse

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi

January 17, 2020 by chilejamie Leave a Comment

Others have and will review this better than I can, but what the heck, i’ll take a stab at it. This book seems to inspire either intense love or intense hate and not much in between based on the reviews at goodreads. However, it won lots of prizes and was on several “best of” lists, so i gave it a shot. And my final verdict? An impressive high wire act that is a chore to read. The author has finely crafted a work of metafiction, […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: high school, metafiction, susan choi, unreliable narrators

chilejamie's CBR12 Review No:4 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: high school, metafiction, susan choi, unreliable narrators ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

A ghost story-thriller combo

The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

January 16, 2020 by chilejamie 2 Comments

Set in a creepy hotel where no one wants to be, not even the owners, a young woman sets out to find out what happened to her aunt, who disappeared 30-odd years before. The point of view switches between the young woman in the current day and her aunt in the early 80s. This back and forth allows the reader to see the two main characters experience similar phenomena in parallel; we also get to see a few secondary characters in  both the past and […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: crime thriller, ghosts, Simone St. James

chilejamie's CBR12 Review No:3 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: crime thriller, ghosts, Simone St. James ·
Rating:
· 2 Comments

Good buildup, letdown resolution, mediocre characterization

A Madness of Sunshine by Nalini Singh

January 16, 2020 by chilejamie Leave a Comment

Romance and thriller combine in this quick read set in New Zealand. The writing is evocative of its setting; I could imagine the steep cliffs, pounding ocean, and dense forest. However, the characterization was deeply clichéd – tough (but beautiful!) woman with hard past meets tough cop with hard past. Most of the secondary characters were one dimensional. In particular, the missing girl was ecstatically described as beautiful and lively multiple times throughout the novel. In fact, every time she is mentioned, the reader is […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: Nalini Singh, New Zealand, thriller

chilejamie's CBR12 Review No:2 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: Nalini Singh, New Zealand, thriller ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments
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Recent Comments

  • Pooja on And she was never ours to claim.I guess we'll just have to see if they pop up again in later books!
  • Classic on Short KingI enjoyed this one too! When he started to do his collection of novellas though became my favs of his shorter works. "Full Dark, No...
  • Classic on The Body in the LibraryYeah he just got worse and worse it seemed LOL. I am starting to wonder if that's why Poirot was remarked to look ridiculous as...
  • esmemoria on Short KingI really like this collection. I can still remember The Jaunt in detail. That one really unnerved me. I also liked The Raft and Word...
  • esmemoria on The Body in the LibraryPoirot started to work my nerves towards the middle of that series He worked Christie's nerves after a while! She eventually hated writing him, but...
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