Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

How fitting that I’m experiencing reviewing this book again…

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

by Leave a Comment

It’s strange how CBR makes you realize the thematic similarities between the books you read. This easily could have come from one of the other books I’ve reviewed this year about loss: “No one tells you it’s all about to change, to be taken away. There’s no proximity alert, no indication that you’re standing on the precipice. And maybe that’s what makes tragedy so tragic. Not just what happens, but how it happens: a sucker punch that comes at you out of nowhere, when you’re […]

Damn you, write faster!

Recursion by Blake Crouch

by Leave a Comment

I need Blake Crouch to start writing like Stephen King. I need him to write like R.L. Stein. I need him to write like Barbara Cartland. I need more of this man’s writing. I don’t want to sound entitled like all those people who got salty with George RR Martin and yelled at him to finish A Song of Ice and Fire before he dies, but based on this book and Dark Matter, no matter how much Blake Crouch writes, it’s not gonna be enough […]

Great except for the bits where I wanted to put it in the freezer.

Recursion by Blake Crouch

by Leave a Comment

Why must Blake Crouch give me all this nightmare fuel? I’m serious, I don’t know why I thought I could get out of this book without my brain being swirled into funnels of terrorized adrenaline. There was little inkling of it in Dark Matter with SPOILERS all of those parallel worlds, and several of them being nuclear wastelands, but that was after the fact. Here, we get it up close and personal and in the moment. Seven times. What the fuck END SPOILERS. I swear, […]

Holy Crap! And Damn!

Summer Frost by Blake Crouch

by Leave a Comment

Woo boy. Blake Crouch put his foot in this short story. Damn. I loved every part of it and think if he can stick the landing like this in his stand-alone novels he would be a instant buy author for me in the future. “Summer Frost” was wonderfully done from beginning to end. I swear this read like the best Black Mirror episode ever. Which is saying something since the past two seasons I have been meh towards Black Mirror. “Summer Frost” follows Riley who […]

A different idea on [redacted for spoiler]

Recursion by Blake Crouch

by Leave a Comment

I didn’t have terribly high hopes going into this one. The summary immediately namedrops his previous book, Dark Matter, which I read and came away from utterly bored but the things we do for CBR Bingo, yeah? So consider me pleasantly surprised here! It even feels like a genuinely new take on [redacted for spoiler]. Sorry, I’m censoring myself. I went back to that same summary and realized they don’t actually give away the matter at the heart of this book so you know, I won’t […]

Book Takes Too Long To Get to the Point

Recursion by Blake Crouch

by Leave a Comment

So at this point I cannot give this one more than three stars. The main reason is that I disliked a good 50 percent of this book. I kept going with it hoping it would pay off, but it took too long to get there. I think dividing up the POVs is what made it confusing. I get why Crouch did it (to make the reveal cooler) but geez it took forever and I was so confused I went back to the beginning to make […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo