Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Hanged Man: Murder and Tarot

Who Will Remember by C.S. Harris

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This is the 20th novel in the series about a crime solving nobleman in Regency England, and the series continues to go strong. This one is more of a straight up murder mystery – some of the middle novels in the series got a bit wrapped up in French espionage story lines. I would even say this one would actually even be approachable to someone that hadn’t read any other novels in the series – of course, you’d be missing some of the complexity of […]

Murder, Tea and Chinese Food

Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (On a Dead Man) by Jesse Q. Sutanto

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I quite enjoyed the first Vera Wong novel so I was excited to see there was a sequel coming out this month. And yet, I admit I was a little worried going into this novel. Jesse Q. Sutanto has another series that is slightly over the top but for that one, the second novel just took things so over the top, that the premise didn’t work for me and I stopped reading it. I’m happy to say that Vera Wong doesn’t go down that route. […]

Feeling a bit lactose intolerant after this one

When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi

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When Emmalita mentioned that she had a hard time getting into this novel because of the ever changing  points of view, I was hoping it might work better for me. After all, I love World War Z, and I don’t think that one has any repeat narrators – unlike Robocalypse, which structurally looked like it would follow a similar approach but then ended up having reoccurring characters. Unfortunately, she was right. Something about this one didn’t work as well for me as it did in […]

Back to a life of crime

The Mime Order by Samantha Shannon

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After the events of the last novel, Paige is back in her old life in the Syndicate, London’s Underground crime ring of clairvoyants. She wants to fight back and do something about what she witnessed in Oxford and expose the oppressive authoritarian government but she doesn’t know what to do next: no one would believe her if she just told the truth as it sounds too fantastical, and the leaders of the Syndicate, who could make a difference, don’t want to hear her – too […]

“I would shiver the whole night through”

Knife River (2024) by Justine Champine

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When it comes to mysteries, I find the plot to be almost the least interesting thing–as long as it’s not too lazy or derivative or actively insulting to the reader, and fits into the vibes of the story. What I do care about, then, are the vibes–if the vibes are there, if the texture of the story is something I can snag myself on, I don’t really worry about clues or reveals (which I’m bad at predicting anyway). The vibes are pretty immaculate in Knife […]

You know it’s good if they don’t want you to read it

Angel of Greenwood by Randi Pink

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Angel of Greenwood is an outstanding YA novel about teenaged love and community set against the backdrop of the 1921 Greenwood Massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Greenwood, the “Black Wall Street”, was wiped out in a vicious act of race-based terrorism with businesses looted and destroyed, houses burned to the ground and an actual bomb dropped on the community. This novel came to my attention because a local school district removed it from the 9th grade reading list, sparking protest from students, their parents and faculty. […]



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