Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Mixing it up with gentrification, magic, and Mothman

When No One Is Watching by Alyssa Cole

Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews

I'm in Love with Mothman by Paige Lavoie

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CBR15 Passport Challenge: Different genres – suspense thriller, urban fantasy, and monster romance When No One Is Watching by Alyssa Cole has been in my audible library for way too long. When it was picked for my Lawless book club, it was a sign. I do like to read mystery and thrillers to mix it up between the glut of romances I read. Dubbed by the author as a gentrification thriller, Sydney Green is having a bad time. After a disastrous divorce, she’s moved back in […]

Back then we prayed to the gods and went on killing sprees. Now we have Zoloft.

Fit for the Gods: Greek Mythology Reimagined by Jenn Northington and S. Zainab Williams

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Zoraida Cordova knows what’s what. Her story, “The Gorgon Confessionals,” opens Fit for the Gods by imagining that the gods, immortals, heroes and villains of Greek mythology are regenerating into the modern world, they have their memories, but not necessarily their powers. Through a documentary series, Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy, is examining the story of Medusa and Perseus through a series of interviews. Zeus is a Republican candidate for President. (Vote Hades!). The stories by two of my favorite authors, Suleikha Snyder and Alyssa Cole […]

A thriller based in gentrification

When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole

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When I was reading through the categories for Read Harder 2023 challenge, I was stymied by number 23: Read a social horror, mystery, or thriller novel. I had no idea what a social horror novel was. I had never heard of this genre. I did a quick search for “social horror” and found a few lists. Wouldn’t you know, it turns out I love this genre! The Only Good Indians, Lovecraft Country, Mexican Gothic (which admittedly I loved in concept but not execution) are all […]

“News always reached Miss Marple, one way or another.”

Marple: Twelve New Stories by Various

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I would read more of these Agatha Christie short story collections featuring notable authors, for sure. Even the ones where Americans tried and failed to capture that British Marple feeling were entertaining in their failure. But most of these stories were pretty successful! One nailed it completely. Highlights for me were the stories from Ruth Ware (I know!), Naomi Alderman, Elly Griffiths, Kate Mosse, and Leigh Bardugo. This may be the easy way out, but I’ve just copied and pasted my Goodreads status update mini-reviews […]

A person pretending to be an AI and an AI pretending to be a person.

The AI Who Loved Me by Alyssa Cole

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Alyssa Cole dipping her toe into science fiction should be plenty to entice most readers. It’s also a short read, which if you read science fiction, you know is as rare as a diamond not mined by children and used to fund war crimes. Plot: Trinity used to work for the Hive, a fairly blatant near future proxy for google, but after an accident left her badly injured, she’s mostly just kind of there. She works from home pretending to be the AI of a […]

“People bury the parts of history they don’t like, pave it over like African cemeteries beneath Manhattan skyscrapers.”

When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole

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Thrillers aren’t usually my genre. Is that why When No One Is Watching is good but not great for me? Possibly. But we read out of our comfort zones on purpose so that maybe the next one is better, or that we’re more ready for it. This is another book that hopped to the front of the to read line based on this year’s Read Harder Challenge which has a task specifically for reading a political thriller by a marginalized author and this fits the […]



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