Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Devil is in the Detail between these Two Mysteries

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson

The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett

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I am in the midst of binging some mystery books, and recently read Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone and The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels. I was unfamiliar with these authors and coincidentally read them one after the other. I was pleasantly surprised how complementary they were with each other. Everyone tells the story of a dysfunctional family reunion that quickly turns into multiple murders told from the point of view of one of the family members who happens to be a mystery writer […]

Don’t Become the Story

The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett

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CBR 15 Bingo: On the Air – This book is about a pair of authors in pursuit of the truth about a twenty year-old murder-suicide case – but what information will be revealed to the public is still up for debate. Amanda is a well-known true crime author who has been invited to write a book about the mysterious case of the Alperton Angels, a small cult which twenty years ago committed mass suicide after attempting to sacrifice an infant they believed to be the […]

This book was a ride.

The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett

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What it comes down to with this book is that I just had a great time while reading it. I really feel like Janice Hallett is getting better with every book. She had the puzzle element down in the first book but I didn’t care about the characters or connect emotionally with the story. In her second book, The Twyford Code, I connected hard with the characters thanks to some clever twistiness and she still had the nice puzzle element, even leveled up a little. With […]

“I disagree. If a feeling knocks and no one answers, it’ll get p[EXPLICIT]d off. It’ll kick the door in, chuck the gift at you and smash your best ornaments so you don’t disrespect it again. You’ll be clearing up a lot more mess than you had to start with. So it’s good, Maxine, to cry if you want. Remember that.”

The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett

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I might have to go lower my rating for The Appeal based on how much more I liked this one. The premise is once again based on a unique format; this time instead of being told through emails, we’ve got audio recordings made on an old iPhone 4 by a man just out of an eleven year prison stint. The difference between her first book and this one, aside from being more elaborate, is that here we have characters to emotionally connect to. In The Appeal, the format […]

Correspondence Course

The Appeal by Janice Hallett

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An amateur theater group is preparing their production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons when the director and leading lady receive devastating news: their 2-year-old granddaughter has a rare and deadly form of cancer. Told by their doctor that an promising treatment is available, they launch a fundraising effort to pay for it. The rest of the theater troupe goes all in, including several of the director’s family members and friends, and a group of nurses at the local hospital. Alongside rehearsals for the play, […]

Charity

The Appeal by Janice Hallett

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Poppy, the two-year-old granddaughter of the Haywoods, is diagnosed with an aggressive brain cancer, the whole community rallies around them to raise money for her treatment. But not all is as it seems in this little town, and when someone turns up dead on the night of the Fairway Players’ dress rehearsal, the truth must be uncovered. I picked up this book because someone here recommended it (thank you!) and because it’s been a while since I read a good epistolary novel. Certainly I’ve never […]



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