Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

Down by the sea is where you drown your scars

Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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It’s 1983, and Malibu is getting ready for the party of the year that pro-surfer and model Nina Riva – estranged daughter of legendary rocker Mick Riva – throws every year. Nina’s siblings gather too: not-really twins Jay and Hudson, normally joined at the hip, now have a terrible secret that threatens to pull them apart; and baby sister Kit, headstrong and on a quest for independence. The crowd at the party grows speedily and sets in motion a chain of events that will forever […]

Putin Hates It

Pioneer Summer by Elena Malisova, Katerina Silvanova, and Anne O. Fisher

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DNF I was very excited to read this book after spotting it on the NEW table in a local bookstore. With the tagline, “Putin hates it,” how could I not be interested? Released as fan fiction and then formally published in Russia in 2021, this book became a sensation on Tiktok and gained widespread popularity with Russian-speaking readers. The Russian government took notice and, along with other popular books and content about LGBTQ characters and themes, banned it. The government claimed that it violated a […]

Groan

The Firm by John Grisham

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It was the eyes, the cold black eyes with layers of black wrinkles around them. Great eyes. Unforgettable eyes. His hair was white and thin on top with thickets around the ears, and the whiteness contrasted sharply with the rest of his face. When he spoke, the eyes narrowed and the black pupils glowed fiercely. Sinister eyes. Knowing eyes. ― John Grisham, The Firm You have only two choices, Mitch. Join us, or die. ― John Grisham, The Firm CBR17 Bingo: Borrow (Bingo from Arts to […]

The Eighties Man

The Chalk Man by CJ Tudor

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Eddie is a young boy in 1986 and he does what other 1980s teenagers did: hang around with his friends during a long, hot summer. They devise a plan to send each other secret messages using stick figures that they draw in chalk. Then, a terrible accident happens and not soon after, a body is found in the forest.  If books and TV shows are anything to go by, it’s amazing that anyone managed to escape the eighties unscathed. Then again, the point of the […]

Of Lies and Men

Girl, Forgotten by Karin Slaughter

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On a balmy spring eve, eighteen year old Emily Vaughn zips herself into her prom dress with some difficulty, then walks over to her high school to confront the people she thought were her friends. It’s 1982 and Emily is about eight months pregnant. Reviled by her classmates, she is soon thrown out of the prom. Emily disappears on her way home; her dead body is found in a dumpster next morning.  Some forty years later, US Marshall Andrea Oliver, fresh off the academy, is […]

I went to the library and checked out a book because I was getting scared.

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I just reviewed Becky Albertalli’s “Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda” and I’m not going to lie, I was reading “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” at the same time, and sometimes I had trouble telling the difference between them. And I mean that with every compliment, because, as I wrote in my “Simon” review, there’s a strong and important tradition of novels that normalize the alienation of adolescence, and the millions of forms that it can take. “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” is […]



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