Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“You’re overthinking it.’ ‘I have anxiety. I have no other type of thinking available.”

Midnight Library by Matt Haig

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It’s a Wonderful Life with parallel lives. Plot: Nora Seed is depressed. Suicide ideation depressed. In a matter of a day, she loses her pretty crummy job, her cat, and a connection to a neighbor she thought was a sort of friend. So late that night, she takes a lot of pills and waits for the end. She closes her eyes and when they open, which is already a surprise, she finds herself in a vast library staffed by her old school librarian. And the […]

“I realize your default energy level is Cardboard Cutout, but I can’t get to know you if you don’t speak.”

The Soulmate Equation by Christina Lauren

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Can genetics help you find love? Consider me unconvinced. Plot: Jess has had a rough time of it in the love department and between work and raising her kid solo, she doesn’t really have time to date. But there’s a new app on the market that promises genetic compatibility and her best friend convinces her to send in a sample. When it comes back, she’s matched at 98% with the founder, which, like, sus, right? But the company really, really wants to use this as a photo […]

“Lydia is dubious at first, but if you can’t trust a librarian, who can you trust?”

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins

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Plot: Lydia is a Mexican woman living in Acapulco with her husband and son. She runs a bookstore and her husband works as a journalist sounding the alarm on the growing danger of cartels. An article about a new leader of a cartel results in a snowball effect that leaves 16 members of Lydia’s family dead, brutally murdered, and Lydia and her son Luca alive only by sheer luck. So they pack a bag, and they run. And run. And run. This is a hard […]

Children of Dune – a worthy successor to the original novel

Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

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It has been probably over 30 years since I last read Children of Dune and I did not remember it being this complex or political. Of the first 3 books in the series, it is the one that is most focused on politics (yes, even more than Dune). The intrigues between Jessica and Duncan, between Alia and the twins, between the Preacher and Alia, basically everyone is scheming against everyone else. The religious subtext takes a backseat, with one notable exception, to the plotting of […]

A road trip with a difference

Becoming Dinah by Kit de Waal

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Seventeen-year old Dinah has spent almost all her life on a religious commune somewhere in Northumberland (in northern England), being educated at home with the other children. Only recently has she gone to a ‘proper’ school, and her feelings of culture shock and confusion are convincingly drawn. When we first meet her, something awful has happened (which de Waal delays telling us about), and Dinah is taking advantage of her mother’s absence on a Women’s Retreat to reinvent herself as ‘Ishmael’, cutting off her long […]

If Stephen King, James Cameron and Stanley Kubrick had a baby…

Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes

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Read this book. Just do it. Whether it’s kindle or paper or audio, I don’t care. Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes is fan-freaking-tastic, a true escape from whatever is going on in your world. I feel like I should be up front about this: S.A. Barnes is a Facebook friend of mine, and has been for many years. For that matter, she’s been a friend to Cannonball Read. She’s been so kind as to contribute signed copies of her books* to CBR in the past […]



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