Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Been on my ‘recommended by a Cannonballer’ list for years now… (#Cannonballer Says!)

Confessions by Kanae Minato

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Confessions by Kanae Minato could have been my White Whale, but I’ve chosen to count it as my Cannonballer Says square because I never would have heard of it if it hadn’t been for Cannonball Read! I saw a review here a few years ago (I think it must have been ElCicco’s!) and was super intrigued, but hadn’t been able to get it from my library (and I was committed to not buying books until I got a better-paying job–not coincidentally, I read this while commuting […]

This whole book is one big WTF moment.

Confessions by Kanae Minato

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If you would like to read something absolutely wild, go ahead and pick up this book. I knew it was going to be dark going in, and maybe it’s just because I don’t read all that many books that could truly be described as “dark,” but this was DARK. But also, it somehow managed to avoid being bleak? I think it was because it was so audacious. I just kept thinking the whole time I was reading it, WHAT. SHE DID WHAT NOW. (She being […]

What would you do if you knew who was responsible for the death of your child?

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Translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder A little girl is dead. Her mom knows who killed her. She wants revenge. It sounds like a simple enough plot, what could be more straightforward and relatable than a broken-hearted mother wanting to punish those responsible for the death of her child? But this is not a simple story. As the story starts, Moriguchi, a middle school teacher, is telling her students that she is retiring from teaching. Moriguchi has recently lost her 4-year-old daughter, Manami. She […]

Four Recent novels about teens: What I Saw and why I Lied; All American Boys; The Hate U Give; Confessions

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What I Saw and Why I Lied – Judy Blundell – 3/5  This novel takes place in the years following World War II back in the US. Our narrator’s mother has a new husband who was off to the war and our main character, a teenager in high school, goes with her mom and her husband to a resort in Florida, right at the beginning of school. While she’s there she meets a local boy, a bellhop at the hotel, who is kind of ugly […]

Iyamisu. That’s all you need to know.

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According to Wikipedia, one critic called this novel the “Gone Girl of Japan”, which is interesting because it was originally punished in 2008, four years before Gillian Flynn’ s most popular novel. At any rate, they both fall into the iyamisu category of fiction, which is Japanese for “eww mystery”, and is reserved for the deliberately shocking form of storytelling familiar to anyone who has read Gone Girl (which is most of us). If you take nothing else from this review – please incorporate that […]

To The Extreme

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Confessions is a psychological thriller/murder novel that keeps a fast pace and tight organization throughout. Told from the points of view of multiple narrators, the story focuses on the murder of a middle school teacher’s 4-year-old daughter and the fallout from that murder. Parent-child relationships, teacher-student relationships and the allure of revenge are the themes that run throughout. Chapter one is narrated by middle school teacher Moriguchi. It is the last day of the term, and she announces to her class that it is also […]



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