Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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More Murder, Less Family Drama Please

The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins

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Decades after the heiress Ruby McTavish was kidnapped as a toddler and dubiously recovered a year later, her adopted son Camden and his wife Jules return to her ancestral home in a bid to claim her long-neglected inheritance. This book draws inspiration from several cases in the early 20th century in which a kidnapped or vanished child was thought to be returned, only for it to be later discovered that it was instead some unrelated child who for whatever reason was trying to be forced […]

I was not expecting to feel personally victimised by a Rainbow Rowell novel

Cherry Baby by Rainbow Rowell

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This may be a 3.5 star book, but I’m not actually sure right now. Thank you to William Morrow and NetGalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own. This book is out on April 14th. Cherry’s husband, Tom, is in Los Angeles, working on turning his web comic-turned extremely successful graphic novel, Thursday, into a movie. His semi-autobiographical comic, which happens to have a caricatured version of Cherry in it, who is called Baby. Now that there are multiple trailers, even complete strangers recognise […]

Between the Accident and the Incident

Curse of the Blumenthals by Phyllis Karas

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Three generations of journalist Phyllis Karas’s family are marked by two great tragedies – the car crash which killed six members of the family, and the murder committed by the first grandchild born after that accident hardly twenty years later. This is an interesting mash-up of a book – part family history, part true crime, and sometimes even a scrapbook. Karas dives into the crimes which impacted her family, whether they were those who committed them or the victims, studying how their effects rippled through […]

These characters have SO much in common, but their crippling insecurities may be the worst thing they share

While You Were Seething by Charlotte Stein

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3.5 stars Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own. This book will be out on April 9th. Daisy Emmett is an excellent PR manager and has successfully managed a number of difficult clients, but trying to repair the image of famous romance author Caleb Miller, after he very publicly declared to the world that “happy endings are for fools”, might be her most difficult job yet. Their mutual dislike of one another started when they were […]

“I have received many love notes about my wit. Though they are often disguised as strongly worded letters which request I hold my tongue.”

A Most Agreeable Murder by Julia Seales

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When a rich, eligible young man comes to town, Beatrice Steele, a Regency-era miss with an unseemly interest in crime, is determined that her younger sister Louisa will be his bride. But when he is poisoned in front of the whole ball, she must solve his murder instead with the assistance of the prickly detective Drake. This book is a humorous pastiche of Jane Austen and Agatha Christie with plenty of intrigue and funny characters, but its inspiration is while in some ways its greatest […]

Leopard in a Woman’s Skin

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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Carlota leads a sheltered life as the only daughter of Dr. Moreau, who creates human-animal hybrids on a remote estate in Mexico. But when the son of her father’s sponsor comes to visit, it sets into motion a chain of events which upends everything she knows about her father’s work, and about herself. I haven’t read The Island of Doctor Moreau, but luckily you don’t need to have to done so to enjoy this book – though I’m sure I probably missed an Easter egg or […]



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