Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search this Site

“So this is merely romance,” she frowned disapprovingly. “I was hoping for an epic adventure, or a gothic mystery at the very least.” Ned laughed. “Darling, don’t worry, the story has just begun.”

The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels by India Holton

by Leave a Comment

Official book description, because I finished this book two months ago, and the plot is rather convoluted: Cecilia Bassingwaite is the ideal Victorian lady. She’s also a thief. Like the other members of the Wisteria Society crime sorority, she flies around England drinking tea, blackmailing friends, and acquiring treasure by interesting means. Sure, she has a dark and traumatic past and an overbearing aunt, but all things considered, it’s a pleasant existence. Until the men show up. Ned Lightbourne is a sometimes assassin who is […]

Nah.

The Cloisters by Katy Hays

by 3 Comments

What it comes down to is that I found this book extremely unpleasant. And also dull. And reading it made me feel like I would rather be banging my head against something very solid. This was made even more frustrating by glimmers of stuff I probably would have found very intriguing in another author’s hands, or in another type of story altogether. The Cloisters is about a woman whose name I have long forgotten who is heading to her first post-graduate job, supposedly at the […]

Monks & Nuns & Ivy Oh My!

The Last Heir to Blackwood Library by Hester Fox

by Leave a Comment

I’ve read some real stinkers lately but luckily this gentle gothic mystery wasn’t one of them. The story begins in London, 1925, with young Ivy Radcliffe hurrying to her appointment with an unknown solicitor. Ivy lives a life of poverty and struggle in the East End. She has lost her whole family somewhat recently, her father and brother in the trenches of the Great War and her mother of illness soon after. The solicitor informs Ivy that she is now Lady Hayward, inheritor of the […]

This book only has 480 ratings over on Goodreads, and I think it deserves more readers!

The House in the Orchard by Elizabeth Brooks

by Leave a Comment

I was actually given this book for free in my first Aardvark Book Club box, so it wasn’t one I was really interested in reading, but a free book is a free book, so I thought I’d give it a shot. And I liked it! It was a little bit messy in terms of pacing, and the blurb is pretty misleading, but I was so angry by the end of the book, I have to give it props, because it managed to get me invested […]

“I call it relief, though it was only the relief that a snap brings to a strain or the burst of a thunderstorm to a day of suffocation. It was at least change, and it came with a rush.”

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

by Leave a Comment

Even though after reading Henry James in school several times and then declaring him my nemesis, for he is the master triumphant of the never-ending sentence, and saying I would never read from him again, I could not then resist the pull of an audiobook narrated by Emma Thompson, and indeed I am glad I did not do so. Phewf, done with that nonsense. That is what it is like to read Henry James. The first paragraph in The Wings of the Dove nearly killed […]

Don’t Look Now & Other Stories

Don't Look Now & Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier

by 2 Comments

I bought this collection a few months back and then never got around to finishing it until now. Apparently insomnia has claimed me again, and I finally finished some books and put some others on the DNF list. Per usual, here are my ratings for each story in the collection. Overall I gave this 4 stars since some of the stories were baffling to me. I don’t know what message I was supposed to be getting. “Don’t Look Now” (5 stars)-John and Laura are a […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo