Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

To be homeless is to be ignored when people walk past while still being in full view of everyone.

Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri

by Leave a Comment

“To speak is to stumble, to hesitate, to detour and hit dead ends. To listen is straightforward. You can always just listen.” ― Yū Miri, Tokyo Ueno Station CBR15Bingo: Asia & Oceania CBR15Passport: The story takes place in Japan. Based on the gold medals on the book cover, the charming cover art, and the synopsis of the book, I was expecting a quirky, sometimes weepy, ghost story set in one of my favorite places in the world. To put it simply, this book is bleak. […]

A More Interesting Way to Do Hogwarts

Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments by T. L. Huchu

by Leave a Comment

Bingo 14: Snake Quick notice: because Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments is new acquisition at my local library, it had a shorter checkout period with no renewal so I had to give it back before getting to write about it; I may not be as totally sure of certain details as a result. The snake theme actually works on more than one level here because there is indeed a hospital and mysterious affliction that is affecting school boys in the magical community, and Ropa gets […]

A Decent School Ghost Story continued

Toilet-bound Hanako-kun vol.10 by Aidalro

by Leave a Comment

Imagine a good twin – evil twin story where the good twin may not be all that good; then add in the scenario of being trapped in a fantasy world where if you stay too long you lose your memories and it turns out that not everyone there is entirely fictional, including one or both of the twins. And if you want to escape you have to murder someone you don’t think deserves it, but there’s a mysterious “voice” Writing messages suggesting there’s another way […]

Spooky times at school

Toilet-bound Hanako-kun vol.9 by Aidalro

by Leave a Comment

Spooky month is here, and I’ve found a level of spooky that’s so far been my speed. Toilet-bound Hanako-kun is a manga that is a ghost story about Nene, a girl in middle school who gets drawn into the supernatural world and shenanigans of the titular ghost who haunts the girls bathroom in spite of being a boy and being able to effectively rule the school supernatural side of the world. There’s the friend who turns out to be an exorcist, and the mysterious figure […]

In which I mostly fuss about things that I wanted to be better

Bridge of Souls by Victoria Schwab

by Leave a Comment

Given the premise of the Cassidy Blake series (girl with ghost hunter parents can see and gets into trouble with real ghosts), it should be no surprise that the next city to be the setting of an adventure would be New Orleans, LA, USA. Bridge of Souls is on the one hand, better than its immediate predecessor, but on the other, still has some of the same problems. I should say that I do in fact realize this is middle grade fiction, and thus it […]

Murder mystery + ghost story

The Broken Girls by Simone St. James

by Leave a Comment

The Broken Girls is a combination murder mystery and ghost story. While flawed, it’s an entertaining read and does an admirable job balancing two murders in two time periods with the mysterious visions seen at a 1950s boarding school for “troubled” girls. In Vermont in 2014, journalist Fiona Sheridan is haunted by the 20-year-old murder of her older sister Deb. Although the killer, Tim Christopher, Deb’s former boyfriend and the son of an important local family, was quickly apprehended and has spent the last 20 […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo