Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

This will be a short review considering the length of the book

Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith

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I started reading this series during the early days of the pandemic, and it’s proven to be satisfying, escapist fun for me. I stumbled upon this latest entry in one of my local Little Free Libraries, so I decided to read it before CBR BINGO hits, because at 927 pages, there’s no way I was going to let it eat up prime BINGO scoring time. That said, I’m going to write this review in list form of likes and dislikes. Dislikes: 927 pages. There is […]

Overboard

Overboard by Sara Paretsky

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A great installment in the V.I. Warshawski series. The only reason why I didn’t give this 5 stars is that the technology angle flew over my head (pun intended) like each time I read about it. I still don’t understand it, and just shrugged and decided to enjoy the book. “Overboard” follows V.I. as she is dealing with the impact of COVID-19 on her, her business, and the city of Chicago. V.I. is running her dogs when one of them gets away from her and […]

The Book of Cold Cases

The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James

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I think the only book of Simone St. James I have really enjoyed has been The Sun Down Motel, and even that fell apart for me towards the end. I think the supernatural aspects of this book just actually didn’t work in this one one. The main character, Shea, was too self righteous for me and I got really tired of her by the end of the book. “The Book of Cold Cases” follows receptionist, Shea Collins. Shea is just going through the motions of […]

Whodunnit? Whodonut!

City of Lies by Alafair Burke

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New York, 2010-ish. A woman runs down the street in the pouring rain and stops at a payphone to make a 911 call. She tells them a murder has been committed. A man has been shot in the luxury penthouse that belongs to a wealthy investor. The police try to trace the call but the woman is long gone by the time they reach the pay phone. Months later, college student Megan Gunther is brutally slain after being stalked online. Detective Ellie Hatcher is convinced […]

The Schoolhouse Blizzard

Maddy and the Monstrous Storm by Julie Gilbert

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Maddy  is new to the prairie, but when she and her classmates are trapped in their schoolhouse by a ferocious blizzard, she must lead them all to safety. I’d first heard of the Schoolhouse Blizzard a year or two ago, when I read Melanie Benjamin’s The Children’s Blizzard, which similarly followed a schoolteacher and a group of schoolchildren who were trapped by the snow and had to fight to survive. This book covers the same topic and themes, but in a way that is more accessible […]

“Words are our tools of resurrection.”

The Dictionary of Lost Words: A Novel by Pip Williams

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I would not have expected the story of the creation of the first Oxford English Dictionary to be a gripping topic for a novel, but I stand corrected. Pip Williams’ historical fiction encompasses not only the work of compiling the first Oxford English Dictionary but also events of historic importance that occurred during that same time period— WWI and the women’s suffrage movement. Many of the characters in this novel are real people, such as Dr. James Murray and Edith Thompson, but through the main […]



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