Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“It turned out that some crooked things looked even worse when straightened. Some tangled knots only made sense once unraveled.”

Wool by Hugh Howey

by 1 Comment

I know it’s only January 20th so this is a bold claim, but Wool is going to be on my top 10 list of books I read in 2024. This novel started as a standalone short story “Holston,” but upon its publication and soaring popularity, Howey wrote four more stories that have now been bound together in this first volume. And it gripped me from page one through the very end. This is exactly the kind of book that I love to read in winter, […]

What It Says on the Label

Identity by Nora Roberts

by 3 Comments

Morgan’s life is destroyed when a serial killer murders her best friend and steals her identity. She moves back in with her family and starts rebuilding her life as well as she can. But she’s not out of danger yet – for it was she who Rozwell had intended to be his victim, and he’s not done with her yet. Of Nora Roberts’s many author hats, I like her romantic suspense books best. They are quite formulaic, I will admit. There is a heroine whose […]

“To be loved by your father is to be loved by God”

Daughter by Claudia Dey

by Leave a Comment

I am a big fan of emotional novels, where the plot mostly revolves around characters striving for some sort of relational resolution. But, these novels are pretty tricky to deliver both effectively and entertainingly. I don’t know that Daughter fully succeeds here, but the ideas expressed were interesting enough that I carried through with finishing it. This novel is the story of Mona and her dysfunctional relationship with her father, Paul. Well, truly the entire family is full of dysfunctional relationships. Paul is a writer […]

Confusing, in a good way

The Reader by Traci Chee

by Leave a Comment

Sefia is the main character of this book, and we follow her journey throughout. As one does with the main characters. Her father was murdered when she was young, and is taken in by a family friend, Nin. Nin teaches her how to survive, and not just by following the law. Hunting and stealing are not about Sefia and Nin, which eventually leads to Nin being kidnapped. Sefia has no idea where to find her, or even begin searching. This was a good book, with […]

By Golly

Holly by Stephen King

by Leave a Comment

Unlikely private eye Holly Gibney is hired by the mother of a missing woman to track down her daughter. At first, Holly assumes the daughter has simply run away, tired of her overbearing mother, but she soon discovers that something more sinister is at play. I majored in English. Trust me when I say there’s little that sucks the joy out of reading as much as majoring in English, because you’re bound to overthink everything you read. The fun stuff isn’t good enough and the […]

Wait. So now I have to read ‘Jane Eyre’?

Reluctant Immortals by Gwendolyn Kiste

by 2 Comments

Reluctant Immortals opens with an opening line that is just … *chefs kiss*; “It’s almost sundown in Los Angeles, and Dracula’s ashes won’t shut up.” The book is set in 1967 California, splitting most of the action between Los Angeles and the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, with a few spots visited in between. It is the Summer of Love and also yet just another summer for Lucy Westnera and Bertha (Bea) Mason, who are the immortals of the book title. Lucy comes from the […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo