Cannonball Read 11

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“He knew time could heal. But it could also do more damage. A forest fire, spread over time, would consume everything.”

A Trick of the Light (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #7) by Louise Penny

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Clara Morrow has finally been discovered as an artist at the age of fifty. She has her own solo show in a prestigious Montreal art museum, and to celebrate, her friends are throwing her a party in their small village of Three Pines. Everything is going smashingly, until a dead body is discovered in her garden, and it turns out to be her old childhood friend, Lillian, with whom she had a bitter parting as an adult. With yet another dead body in close proximity to these same people (I’m just going with it at this point), Chief Inspector Gamache […]

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4/25/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:45 |

“I’m sorry. I was wrong. I need help. I don’t know.”

Bury Your Dead (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #6) by Louise Penny

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I’m officially hooked on this series. With the exception of books two and three, which I thought were dips in quality, this series just keeps getting better. Part of my enjoyment comes from this being essentially now a serialized story. The first four you could pick up out of order and still get everything out of them that Penny wanted you to. But this one almost entirely depends, narratively and emotionally, on the previous five books, but mostly the fifth. Spoilers for previous books to follow. We ended the last book with Olivier being arrested for the murder of the […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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1/8/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:5 |

“It was vital to be aware of actions in the present. Because the present became the past, and the past grew. And got up, and followed you.” #CBRBingo

The Brutal Telling (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #5) by Louise Penny

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This was my favorite of these books so far, by quite a large margin. I would say it probably even surpasses the first book for me, mostly because there was no Agent Yvette Nichol here to muck things up (though she has gotten much better since that first book). There was just something about the central mystery here that really appealed to me. This is book five in the Inspector Gamache series, and he continues to be a very calm, steady presence for Penny to anchor her book series around. This is also the first book since Still Life to […]

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11/5/2018 's CBR10 Review No:133 |

I really dislike Peter now, FYI. #CBRBingo

A Rule Against Murder (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #4) by Louise Penny

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Project: Catch Up On Review Backlog, review #5 out of 11 Glad to say I’m fully back on board with this series. I’ve decided to overlook its faults in favor of the things it does really well. I don’t think these same people in this same very small town are going to stop improbably encountering dead bodies anytime soon. And what it does really well is character. Penny’s characters are very human. The consensus for this one seems to be that it’s good, not great. Just solid. But I liked it better than the last two in the series, certainly […]

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8/8/2018 's CBR10 Review No:94 |

The Real Mystery is the Economy of Three Pines

The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny

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I didn’t finish this one in time for Canada Day but at least the call for Canada Day reviews provided the push for me to finally read this one.  It’s weird because I loved the first Chief Inspector Armand Gamache novel but haven’t felt the need to plow through it in the way that I basically binged through the Sebastian St. Cyr series.  I certainly had trepidations coming into this one because narfna’s review highlighted issues that were already showing signs of developing (for me anyway) in the second novel. And the first half of the novel was a struggle […]

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7/11/2018 's CBR10 Review No:121 |

“It’s our secrets that make us sick.”

The Cruelest Month (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #3) by Louise Penny

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This book bored and frustrated me for the first third, and then something turned and the plot and interesting character stuff got going, and my annoyances were subsumed under actual interest for the characters and story. Subsumed is a fun word to use by the way. Do they still sell Word of the Day toilet paper? I heard about that one time but never investigated further. So when I say that I was frustrated, I mean that I seriously contemplated not continuing with the series. It seemed to me that instead of doing new things with her series, and evolving […]

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5/8/2018 's CBR10 Review No:57 |

“I often think we should have tattooed on the back of whatever hand we use to shoot or write, ‘I might be wrong.”

A Fatal Grace (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #2) by Louise Penny

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I still really like this series, but I was a bit more lukewarm over this book than I wanted to be. Let’s split it up into good and not-so-good. First, good: The mystery in this one was interesting. CC de Poitiers is a wannabe lifestyle guru who has recently moved to Three Pines with her husband and child, whom she disliked and ignored. Her relationship with Crie, her overweight fourteen year old daughter, is downright emotionally abusive. She is seen as cruel by everybody who knows her, including the man she’s having an affair with. Nobody likes her, and nobody […]

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3/13/2018 's CBR10 Review No:34 |

A cozy but emotionally hefty mystery.

Still Life (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #1) by Louise Penny

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Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Quebec is not your typical literary detective. He’s functional. He’s kind. He loves and respects his wife, with whom he has a long and trusting relationship. He is still surprised by the violent crimes it’s his job to investigate. He has no tragic backstory or substance abuse issues. He isn’t a genius. And yet he is still good at his job! (I say all this tongue in cheek; I love all those tropes when they are deployed with skill.) It’s all very normal, and still, compelling. This first book has Gamache and […]

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12/30/2017 's CBR9 Review No:122 |


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