Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“I was, to him, a competent and required presence. Not a worthless, overbearing spinster or deficient female. Was this how men felt all the time? This intrinsic acceptance of one’s significance? No wonder they walked through life expecting so much as their due.” CBRBINGO – Family

The Ladies Road Guide to Utter Ruin (The Ill-Mannered Ladies, #2) by Alison Goodman

by Leave a Comment

This one got a bit complicated, but I still had a great time. The plot is going in a direction I definitely did not expect, I hope it gets back to them helping Regency ladies in need after the next book. (I hope there is more than three!) The premise of The Ill-Mannered Ladies books is that because our two main characters, Gus and Julia, have the gift of independent wealth, and the questionable blessing of being constantly overlooked and underestimated due to their genders […]

From Diabolical Dart Frogs to Kissing Kiwis and beyond

The Dangerous Alphabet Book  by DK Ryland

by Leave a Comment

While alternative alphabet books are not new, The Dangerous Alphabet Book  has a clever concept. We start off with the usual A is for something that is nice, normal, familiar. But in the middle of that an Alligator jumps in and hijacks the tale. By wanting to mix things up, make things a little edgy, and make it dangerous, they cause all sorts of mischief and mayhem to ensue. Of course, our first narrator fights this change, until they realize maybe it is a little […]

Creep

Creep by Emma van Straaten

by Leave a Comment

BINGO: Purple cw: self-harm, internalized fatphobia hot take immediately reminded of the french film À la folie… pas du tout which is also about erotomania, then went to watch the trailer, found everyone’s comments underneath being about having watched this in french class as well, which I find to be quite amusing (Audrey Tautou is probably just a prime French Class actress because she enunciates very precisely) A bit of an exciting read–the author is a friend of a friend from Book Group, and she’ll be attending […]

let sociopaths stay sociopathic, I beg of you!

Finding Grace by Loretta Rothschild

by Leave a Comment

hot take what it is with books featuring sociopaths that we’re meant to empathize with these days? this would have been a four star thriller if Rothschild had stuck to keeping Tom unlikeable and stuck with the consequences of his actions. Unfortunately, this is a review that really does need the spoiler/plot point at around 15% to be revealed in order to say anything of interest. And in order to get there, you also have to get the very first spoiler, the aforementioned “shocking event […]

“Now you understand not every story shares the whole truth.”

The Maiden and Her Monster by Maddie Martinez

by Leave a Comment

By about 10% into the book, I was reminded viscerally of The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden. When reviewing that book I focused on the idea of there being a special power in taking a known story and envisioning it in a new way. I’m firmly of the opinion that approaching storytelling that way – taking what has existed previously and viewing it another way – can lead to some inventive storytelling. There are any number of ways to approach it, and The Maiden […]

The island might be unspoiled but some of its residents really stink…

Summer Shadows by John Harris Dunning, Ricardo Cabral, Brad Simpson and Jim Campbell

by Leave a Comment

The cover of Summer Shadows by John Harris Dunning, Ricardo Cabral, Brad Simpson and Jim Campbell is a tad misleading. It makes things look like a teen thriller in the line of a slightly darker Christopher Pike, RL Stine, or Richie Tankersley Cusick and the like. In other words, something from the late 1980s or early 1990s when I was a teen and actually reading realistic paranormal.  Instead of a “teeny bopper thriller with supernatural” we get sex, drugs, and vampires. We get some downright […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo