Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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“I have received many love notes about my wit. Though they are often disguised as strongly worded letters which request I hold my tongue.”

A Most Agreeable Murder by Julia Seales

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When a rich, eligible young man comes to town, Beatrice Steele, a Regency-era miss with an unseemly interest in crime, is determined that her younger sister Louisa will be his bride. But when he is poisoned in front of the whole ball, she must solve his murder instead with the assistance of the prickly detective Drake. This book is a humorous pastiche of Jane Austen and Agatha Christie with plenty of intrigue and funny characters, but its inspiration is while in some ways its greatest […]

The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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This is hands down my favorite book of Moreno-Garcia since Mexican Gothic. I don’t know about anyone else, but I found some of her other works not hitting it for me. This one had it all, memorable characters, a very strong plot, and a great ending. The Bewitching follows in essence three distinct timelines that all come together in the end. Timeline one follows Minerva, an international graduate student from Mexico that is currently enrolled in Stoneridge College in Massachusetts in 1998. Minerva is trying to […]

He was cloaked in shadows, leaning against the wall, holding a beer by the neck. Her skin tingled.

Enemies to Lovers by Alisha Rai

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Sometimes the thing that speaks to me is so goofily specific I’m almost embarassed to admit what it is. I’m trying to be better about embracing my inner cringe, but also, I don’t think I’m wrong that this moment was the turning point. Sajal and Krish are on the run from one criminal organization and trying to find the head of another in Alisha Rai’s Enemies to Lovers. The sign that they are no longer enemies- she buys him a salad. She buys him a […]

Great Ending to the 1st Part of this series

The Power That Preserves by Stephen R. Donaldson

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God, I love this book. Endings are difficult as concluding a story in a manner that makes sense and is true to the characters you have been on a journey with is akin to landing a rocket on the moon. Donaldson pulled the feat off with this novel. The sequences where Covenant is being pulled into the Land are incredibly strong. The first attempt fails, not because the Lords of the Land were insufficient, but because when they were attempting to summon Covenant he was […]

Illearth War – book 2 of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant

The Illearth War by Stephen R Donaldson

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Donaldson really seems to find himself in this, the second book of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Covenant is still the weakest part of the book, along with the time spent in our world, but everything else is so vibrant. What I loved is how he took characters from the first book that were already interesting and provided even more background and context to them to make them fully 3 dimensional. Mhoram is a wonderful example of this. He played a key role in the […]

(Mostly) Horror Roundup

London Rules (Slough House #5) by Mick Herron

The Drift by CJ Tudor

The Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig

November (Darker Days) by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

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London Rules (Slough House #5, Mick Herron) *** I enjoy the Slough House books, but I never do know what to write about them. They’re well written and the plot is usually creative and unpredictable, but in spite of that (or perhaps because of that) it’s always the same: River fucks something up, Louisa is prickly, Shirley is aggressive, Diana Taverner is sneaky and antagonistic and Jackson Lamb is smarter than everyone else. There is enough intrigue to keep things interesting (and the Apple TV […]



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