Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“I disagree. If a feeling knocks and no one answers, it’ll get p[EXPLICIT]d off. It’ll kick the door in, chuck the gift at you and smash your best ornaments so you don’t disrespect it again. You’ll be clearing up a lot more mess than you had to start with. So it’s good, Maxine, to cry if you want. Remember that.”

The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett

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I might have to go lower my rating for The Appeal based on how much more I liked this one. The premise is once again based on a unique format; this time instead of being told through emails, we’ve got audio recordings made on an old iPhone 4 by a man just out of an eleven year prison stint. The difference between her first book and this one, aside from being more elaborate, is that here we have characters to emotionally connect to. In The Appeal, the format […]

“There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.”

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

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I’m glad my kiddo had the occasion to read this book for school which nudged me to revisit it! I owned a copy (which I think is now battered at the bottom of his backpack) but nothing beats telling your kid, “Oh? What book? Yeah, we have that one.” I can’t imagine a summary of this classic is needed, buuut just in case, Bradbury basically foretold the future in that his novel is in a future world where books are outlawed and firemen, instead of […]

Tackling the wrong tough topic…

The Couple Upstairs by Holly Wainwright

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The Couple Upstairs is about two women. Mel, a Gen X divorced mother of two, struggling to keep her sanity and her kids engaged through the pandemic in Sydney. The other, Lori, a Gen Z backpacker pursuing a romantic relationship with a handsome Aussie bloke to who lives above Mel’s apartment. The bloke – Flynn – is the thread that connects these two women.  He forcibly reminds Mel of a man she dated while backpacking in her 20s for whom she has very complicated feelings. […]

Deja Vu all over again

The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher

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In reviewing The Twisted Ones, I would be correct in summarising the plot as such: A young women with a silly nickname, recently single, upends her life and moves to a kooky new location to assist a family member in need. In moving, she is thrown into a world of magical intrigue. She befriends a zany local barista as the mystery at the heart of the magic unfurls. Eventually, she travels to a fantastical world accompanied by a sassy, fishnet wearing side kick, gets stuck […]

“What was worse, being invisible or being seen? It was exhausting, the ego, the desire to be noticed – even admired – always dilating and contracting, flapping open and crumpling closed, over and over and over.”

We Were Never Here by Andrea Bartz

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I predict that I won’t remember I read this book in a few years… so it’s really going to be like this book was never here (rimshot). This book initially had a whiff of Single White Female, a la the 1992 movie starring Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh, wherein a female friend starts to take their friendship a little too seriously, in an “if I can’t have you no one can” sort of way. Emily and Kristen are besties ride or dies who don’t […]

This ain’t Green Acres

In the Beginning Was the Sea by Tomas Gonzalez

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Cbr15passport books from different countries (Colombia) I learned about this short novel from a NYT “By the Book” interview with Patricia Engel. When asked about a great book that no one seems to know about, she mentioned Tomas Gonzalez’s In the Beginning Was the Sea (published in 1983, English translation in 2014 by Frank Wynne) for its shocking twists and turns. I must admit, it did not disappoint. The set up of the novel had the potential for it to be a comedy, but this […]



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