Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

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 […]

I was a little lost but it was a fun ride all the same

Adversary to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

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Cbr18bingo And (4th book in the Villain series) Bingo #1 Adversary to the Villain is the fourth book in Hannah Nicole Maehrer’s Villain series, with a fifth and final volume to follow next year. I read the first three volumes last summer and liked them very much. I had intended to do a re-read before jumping into book 4 but I never got around to it and I have some regrets about that. Perhaps if I had reread at least volume three I would have […]

Love in the time of COVID

Romantic Comedy: A Novel by Curtis Sittenfeld

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Cbr18bingo Joker Sally Milz is a writer for The Night Owls, aka TNO, a late night sketch comedy show à la SNL. She is divorced, in her 30s, and has been writing for the show for several years, a dream come true for her. When internationally renowned singer/songwriter Noah Brewster hosts the show, some of Sally’s deeply held opinions about fame, dating and romance — informed by her own not so great experiences — are called into question. For Sally, this is a deeply unsettling […]

Part Little House, Part Russian Tale

The Snow Child: A Novel by Eowyn Ivey

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Cbr18bingo craft (a husband and wife craft a child out of snow) The Snow Child is an engaging novel that combines life on a harsh frontier with a fanciful, magical fairy tale. Both can be quite grim and yet it is not a foregone conclusion that harsh reality will ever prevail. Withstanding the storms requires personal strength and the willingness to reach out to others and form bonds. A certain amount of risk is involved, which can be both terrifying and exhilarating. Eowyn Ivey sets […]

I feel like these were written for a younger version of me

Dungeons and Drama by Kristy Boyce

Dating and Dragons by Kristy Boyce

Rolls and Rivalries by Kristy Boyce

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CBR Bingo: Dungeons and Drama – Season “It occurs during the Fall season” CBR Bingo: Dragons and Dating – Success “The gaming group is working on becoming successful online streamers” CBR Bingo: Rolls and Rivalries – Left “Knowing your left from your right is fundamental in marching band” I recently had a staycation downtown by myself for a couple days.  As a full-time mom to two teenagers, it was a welcome respite!  I brought several books with me, as one does.  On Wednesday, I found an independent bookstore […]

“We are rootless …we are landless. And worse than that, we are at the beck and call of the enemy.”

Land: A Novel by Maggie O’Farrell

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Cbr18bingo Map I am a great admirer of Maggie O’Farrell’s novels, but she is the literary personification of “You guys wanna see a dead body?”. O’Farrell does not hesitate to get into the ugly, nitty gritty of life: complex family dynamics, betrayal, grief, sorrow, and violence. She also is comfortable in a variety of time periods: Renaissance Italy, Elizabethan England, 20th century England, and in Land, 19th century Ireland. Yes, this time O’Farrell brings the reader to the Great Famine and its aftermath. That piece […]



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