Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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“She’s been painting the devil on the wall and hoping we won’t know it from the real thing”

Painted Devils by Margaret Owen

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Now, spoilers here for the previous book; it is a direct continuation, after all.  The blurb for Painted Devils starts out fantastically: “Let’s get one thing straight—Vanja Schmidt wasn’t trying to start a cult.” With Little Thieves, I knew that it was a trilogy coming in, but by the end of the book, I wasn’t 100% certain where the story was going to be heading next. After ridding herself of a nasty curse, putting the displaced Princess Giselle back where she belonged, settling most of […]

Colonies, Cults and Crimes

The Colony: Faith and Blood in a Promised Land by Sally Denton

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I have the Harris County Public Library to thank for this recommendation.  Before jumping into The Colony, I have to confess, I wasn’t really aware that the Mormon Church had much of a significant presence in Mexico. But it turns out there a number of prominent  fundamentalist Mormon families have been established there since the US outlawed polygamy in the 1880’s.  The book opens with the 2019 murders of three women and six of their children as they drove through Northern Mexico. While initial reports […]

Sex Cult and Wellness Startup

Empire of Orgasm: Sex, Power, and the Downfall of a Wellness Cult by Ellen Huet

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I have a history being interested in cults and cult-like behaviors, so when Read Harder included a task to read a book about cults, I was excited. I’ve already read The Quiet Damage this year and have a couple others lined up, including Empire of Orgasm: Sex, Power, and the Downfall of a Wellness Cult by Ellen Huet.  Let’s start with the headline – I did not enjoy this book. I am an outlier in that regard.   This is not about the content; this is an incredibly well researched work from someone who has been reporting on the One Taste cult […]

Es-ca-pé! I wonder what that means. It’s funny . . . It’s spelled just like the word ‘escape’.

Obstetrix by Naomi Kritzer

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Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It hasn’t affected the contents of my review. Continuing my recent trend of perfect little genre novellas*, Obstetrix was exactly what I was wanting it to be. We follow Liz, a doctor who was recently prosecuted for performing the last abortion in North Dakota (the jury deemed her not guilty). Fresh off being traumatized, she is then kidnapped by a Christian fundamentalist cult to be their OBGYN. *A short novel? It’s just over 200 pages, my cutoff for […]

“The truth is that the truth is almost beside the point.”

The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family  by Jesselyn Cook

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I begin the year hunting through my very long TBR looking for books for the various Read Harder Challenge tasks. Some of those tasks are easier than others, and some I think will be easy to pick out a book for from my TBR and find that I don’t have any that fit… or maybe only one. That was the case with reading a book about cults – I thought for sure I had plenty of options for it but in fact only The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the […]

When you’re near this hole in the ground, you’re in deep doo-doo

The Deep Well by Laura Creedle

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The Deep Well by Laura Creedle Is it real or imaginary or something else? There were a few plot holes for me, but overall it was a nice read. Well, not nice but cozy … okay not cozy, I mean… Okay, just read it and you’ll know what I mean. Triggers include, but are not limited to: death, violence, cults, bullying, assault, gun violence, stalking, suggested assault of a minor. April, the main character of Creedle’s story, is almost 17. She is waiting for her […]



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