Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


A compelling mystery, an intrepid heroine, a musty creepy mansion… and colonialism

Mexican Gothic by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia

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The book opens up from the perspective of a boy out on a party with a flighty, superficial and possibly spoiled socialite.  I think this was intentional on the part of the author.  A party girl is not what we expect to be a heroine of a story, much less a horror one.  Noemi Taboada is a lovely heroine. Unusual in that she is smart and strong (as most heroines are) but also flighty, stubborn and a socialite who enjoys going to parties and flirting with […]

Kids can be very scary

We Hear Voices by Evie Green

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This book scared the crap out of me. It has the combined terrifying issues of children, murder, mysterious institutions, and other creepy shit. This horror story follows a boy named Billy who has an imaginary friend named Delfy. At first, Delfy seems like a harmless, developmentally approrpriate figment of a young boy’s imagination; but Delfy soon evolves into something malevolent. Something uncany about this book is that it takes place in the future, in a world where a pandemic has swept through the population. Meanwhile, […]

The Last Month in Reading

The Twisted Ones by T Kingfisher

Devolution by Max Brooks

The Return by Rachel Harrison

Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead by Sara Gran

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I finished my last semester of college! I graduate on Wednesday! Yay!!! The last month has been completely filled with work and wrapping up assignments, so I haven’t read anything in the month of May. But I’ve got a few reviews from April that I never got around to posting, so here’s a dump filled with some great reads. Looking forward to having the summer to read! I think I said in a comment on my very first review for CBR (of The Hollow Places […]

“The world is a dangerous place, full of people who don’t trust each other. This is why I am staying up in this tree.”

Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link

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Stranger Things Happen is Kelly Link’s first collection of short fiction, but- PLOT TWIST: it was the only book of hers that I had yet to read. Oops! I suppose….stranger things HAVE happened. Link writes like the  girl in the back of homeroom who is weird, yes, but also cool and intimidating. She’s probably wearing black and writing allover her arms with a ballpoint pen. She knows a lot and she is not afraid to drop reference after reference and allusion after allusion- she doesn’t care […]

“You get used to marvelous things. You take them for granted. You can try not to, but you do. There’s too much wonder, that’s all. It’s everywhere.”

Later by Stephen King

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I really had a good time with this one. I finished it over two months ago now, but unlike my experience with Eternals, I remember it vividly and fondly. I just have one tiny beef with it, and it’s a beef I’ve recently had with King before, but more on that later. Jamie Conklin is our narrator, a kid who can see dead people (King wisely acknowledges the Haley Joel Osment shaped elephant in the room). It’s a talent he (and his mom) have mostly […]

Fire Fire Everywhere

The Burning Girls by CJ Tudor

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This book. Hmm. I think it would be easier to break this down into four parts: a thing I loved, I thing I liked, a thing I disliked and a thing I hated. A thing I loved… Being a mainline Protestant minister in  the post-church western world, I think CJ Tudor captures the subtleties and nuances of what parish ministry is like. She herself is not religious but whoever advised her did an excellent job. I appreciated it. A thing I liked… I don’t read […]



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