Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

When the Past Helps You Solve Your Present Problems

Raising the Horseman by Serena Valentino

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Raising the Horseman by Serena Valentino My rating: 3 of 5 stars A cross between a retelling and a sequel of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving, “Raising the Horseman” seems to not know what it wants to be. On one hand we have the standard story of Sleepy Hollow as told to us through the OG Katrina Van Tassel and her diaries which flesh out the plot and the characters. But then we also have the modern day Kat Van Tassel and […]

Ghosts of Every Flavor

Chill Tidings: Dark Tales of the Christmas Season by ed. Tanya Kirk

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So this is probably very American of me, but I did not realize, Dickens Christmas Carol notwithstanding, that ghost stories are apparently a British Christmas tradition.  Hereabouts, Halloween is the spooky season.  But here we have a collection of late 19th and early 20th century ghostly tales culled from the British Library. By and large this is a fairly amiable collection of ghosts.  They have Reasons to visit the living, mostly along the lines of unfinished business, but aren’t actively looking to harm anyone.  Belief […]

Don’t piss off the evil, angry Groot-look alike

The Lost Boy by Greg Ruth

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The other day I was looking for a book at the library. Never did find that one, but in the browsing, I picked up The Lost Boy by Greg Ruth. It looked interesting enough, the cover a “spooky” brown and green mix. The boy heading into light but not necessarily good looking light. And that tree like “Lost Boy” font/title gave it mystery and supernatural vibes. Open it up and you see black and white illustrations. They are nice enough, detailed, but not overly so. […]

St. Oscars world

The Past is Red by Catherynne M. Valente.

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I did not think I would like the short novel; The Past is Red by Catherynne M. Valente. I felt I would never understand it and was going to stop reading as things felt disjointed, the narrator was bouncing all over, and there was stuff that was very off. The book felt like a translation that was not smoothly translated at that. However, once I understood the flow (there was one), the bounces between “really then, then, and now,” plus how reliable the narrative is […]

“I will strip away all that you know, all that you love, until you have no shelter but mine.”

Ruin & Rising (Shadow and Bone #3) by Leigh Bardugo

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In one word: Predictable Cannonball Read Bingo: Verse Leigh Bardugo created a detailed YA universe with interesting magical elements, warring factions, and all the trappings of a good fantasy tale; however, my time spent in Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse has been uneven. Though I loved her original duology, this trilogy didn’t do it for me. But I finished it. YAY! Or I should say we finished it, as I read the last half of this novel aloud to my teen. Unbeknownst to me, he still likes […]

I wasn’t ready for the Alex Craft series to end.

Grave War by Kalayna Price

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CBR14 Bingo Square: Shadow I’m a big fan of witches and magic mysteries, so I got immediately hooked on the Alex Craft novels. In book one, Alex uses her magic to raise shades, which aren’t quite ghosts. More like the memory imprint of a person after they pass. It’s a very handy skill to have a shade testify in their murder trial. Alex has been quite a few personal revelations, a love triangle, and an angry fae queen by the time we reach the final […]



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