Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


About Zirza

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I am an English teacher from the Low Countries. Like everyone else I aspire to one day write a Booker Prize Winner, but until then I contend my self with reading stuff and writing about it. I try to keep the bitchiness to a minimum, but sometimes I can't help myself. In my spare time I enjoy complaining about the weather and sleeping. I lack the attention span for good books and the tolerance for bad ones. I am stuck in literary purgatory. Hey, at least it's warm here. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Zirza's Quick Questions interview.)

Zirza's Reviews:

Common Denominators

Common Goal (Gamechangers #4) by Rachel Reid

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Eric Bennett is a hockey goalie for the New York Admirals. He’s pushing forty and knows that the end of his career is coming, but he finds it hard to take the plunge. Recently divorced, he’s eager to explore the other side of the bisexual equation, so when he meets Kyle at a gay bar he’s game. But will the age gap get in the way?  I find it increasingly hard to write reviews of these books because they’re all the same. That’s not an […]

At least now I know where the term “Whirling Dervish” comes from

The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak

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That’s the most positive thing I can come up with about this book. What a slog this was.  The plot: Ella Rubinstein is a forty year old stay at home mother to two children and a possibly perpetually unfaithful husband. She takes up a job with a publishing house to revise a novel called Sweet Blasphemy by a man named Aziz Zahara. As she reads the novel, she becomes fascinated by the story of the novel, about the friendship between renowned 13th century poet Rumi […]

A little less conversation, a little more action please

The Secrets We Hide (North Falls #2) by Karin Slaughter

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Sherrif Emmy Clifford and her retired FBI sister Jude have just returned from their mother’s funeral when they hear shots being fired at the house of Emmy’s erstwhile friend Alison. Inside, Alison is found dead and her daughter critically injured. Emmy investigates and before long, suspicion falls upon Alison’s abusive husband Bill. He is the obvious suspect and the sleepy, sedate, tight community of the town of North Falls rallies for Emmy to arrest him, but Emmy is not so sure and the more she […]

Well gosh darn, dang it all to heck

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

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We all know the trend: young women deliberately turning their backs on the modern world and cosplaying the rural homesteading lifestyle, where they grow their own veggies, bake their own bread, butcher their own chickens and make their own clothing. The lifestyle is then perfectly captured on social media, with carefully curated pictures of blond children in gingham dresses and cowboy boots, and posts that are clearly political in nature masked as just-asking-questions. Comments on social media posts split themselves between admiration and vitriol, and […]

Welcome to the land of missed opportunity

The Camino by Anya Nieuwierra

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Lotte’s husband is a cancer survivor. Like many cancer survivors, the experience has altered him and to celebrate his survival, he decides to walk a pilgrimage: the Camino de Santiago, which runs from Le-Puy-en-Velay in central France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. He sets off in good spirits, but then out of the blue Lotte receives word that her husband has taken his own life on the trail. A year later, to mourn him but also to discover what has happened, Lotte follows his […]

Down by the sea is where you drown your scars

Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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It’s 1983, and Malibu is getting ready for the party of the year that pro-surfer and model Nina Riva – estranged daughter of legendary rocker Mick Riva – throws every year. Nina’s siblings gather too: not-really twins Jay and Hudson, normally joined at the hip, now have a terrible secret that threatens to pull them apart; and baby sister Kit, headstrong and on a quest for independence. The crowd at the party grows speedily and sets in motion a chain of events that will forever […]



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