Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

Murder on the New Frontier

Kingdom of Devils: A Tale of Murder in the Shadow of the American Revolution by Katherine Grandjean

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CBR18 Bingo: Map – We follow the Harp brothers’ rampage across maps of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mississippi – and the brothers’ troubles started with land ownership disputes. On the heels of the American Revolution, Wiley and Micajah Harp went on a violent rampage across Tennessee and Kentucky, but while their crimes may have seemed inexplicable to their contemporaries, they may be tied to the dark realities of the newly promised American Dream. I had never heard of the story of the Harps before, and I knew […]

First Book in a New Series

Revenge of the Sunshine by Jackie Lau

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I have read a lot of Jackie Lau novels, and at this point I’ve got a pretty good idea what one of her books is going to contain and if I’m going to enjoy it. It will have emotionally layered backstories for both of its main leads; be set in the larger Toronto environs; food, beverage, bars, and restaurants with delicious descriptions will appear; there will be some quite steamy scenes; mental health representation will appear in no small way; and the value of true […]

Pairs well with the US Open happening now

In Your Court: Serve or Receive? by Kit Haley

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CBR18 Bingo: Season – Tennis court seasons (hard court, clay, grass, etc…) Miles Callahan and Matteo Russo are rivals. Miles is ranked number four in the world and is America’s next big tennis hope. Matteo, an Australian former teenage tennis phenom, is unranked and is fighting his way back into professional tennis after taking years off to recover from a devastating accident when he was nineteen. To compete at the professional level, Matteo pays his own way and doesn’t have the sponsorship deals that normally […]

Hack Your Way Out of Your Troubles

Whack Job: A History of Axe Murder by Rachel McCarthy James

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CBR18 Bingo: Repair – The axe is a tool used to fix a lot of things – houses, sheds, ships.  In this book, it can provide a murderous solution to people’s problems too. The phrase ‘axe murder’ conjures images of a brutal, gruesome, and somewhat old-fashioned crime. The history of the axe murder is much longer than its presence in newspapers though, and more intimately intertwined with the lives of its perpetuators and its victims than one might think. Firstly, Whack Job is a truly excellent […]

Sometimes a Friend Group is Just a Girl and a Murderous Haunted Doll

She's A Doll by Barbara Truelove

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CBR18 Bingo: Friends – The emotional center of this story is the friendship between Lucy and Nicola. After Lucy is murdered by her best friend’s brother, she does not go gently into that good night but instead possess a porcelain doll and decides that she must kill Kyle. But a doll body is weak, so she turns to Nicola, a former classmate, for help in her mission. I’ve long believed that horror and humor are two sides of the same coin, so I really enjoy when […]

Better than the first one

Bridget & Gabe Are Not Okay by Lex Croucher

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CBR18 Bingo: And (literally in the title) Thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own. This book is on sale now. I don’t know if Croucher intends this to be an ongoing series, but readers should know that this is book two, and this review is probably going to contain some spoilers for book one, Gwen & Art Are Not in Love (which I read earlier this summer, but will not be reviewing because I’m already WAY too […]



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