Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Murder Takes a Vacation by Laura Lippman

Murder Takes a Vacation by Laura Lippman

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Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review. This took forever. What kills me is that it’s a short book (only 269 pages) and it dragged. Terribly. I have read all of the Tess Monaghan books, FYI there are 11 books and some novellas too. I was a huge fan of this series and I think only gave two of the books 2 stars, but I thought most were 3 stars or above reads. For the […]

Oh Baby

Prom Mom by Laura Lippman

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Amber is a teenager. She is smart, does well at school, and when her boyfriend takes her to prom she couldn’t be happier. But then her boyfriend leaves to pursue the girl he really wants. Amber doesn’t feel well, goes to their hotel room alone, and gives birth to a premature baby she didn’t know she was carrying. The baby dies, and Amber is sent to juvie for an indeterminate length of time. When she gets out, she restarts her life elsewhere. Years later, in […]

Dreams of a Misogynist

Dream Girl by Laura Lippman

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Dream Girl is the fourth Laura Lippman book I’ve read after Lady in the Lake, Prom Mom, and Sunburn. DG is now up there with Prom Mom as my favorite so far, not least because the female characters get their revenge on the men who have wronged them. Dream Girl is the story of Gerry Andersen, a successful writer who has moved to Baltimore from NYC to care for his dementia-ridden mother, who then suddenly dies as Gerry is moving into his new apartment. Lippman, […]

The Night Of

Prom Mom by Laura Lippman

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Read as part of CBR15bingo: adulthood. The book focuses on people who are moving on to adulthood in the present day after something terrible happened to them in their respective pasts.  Laura Lippman’s been on a roll in the last decade with these standalone novels. This is another winner and while it might not be on the level of Sunburn or Dream Girl, it’s still quite good. Lippman is very good at writing about people who are perpetually bound together in certain ways, often by tragedy. Here in […]

The Cabin in the Woods

The Most Dangerous Thing by Laura Lippman

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I’ve written before about my reading journey with Laura Lippman. I loved the Tess Monaghan series for its local color, less so for Tess.* Lippman had better books in her and as she branched out to standalone works, her talent shone. She does excellent character-based crime tales with enough local flavor to fill in blanks but not so much that you suffocate on it. This is one of her early stand-alone works. I’m not sure why I’ve never read it but I’m glad I did […]

A literary mystery where the stuff on the side is more interesting than the main course.

Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman

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I feel like this book proves how diverse the crime/mystery genre can be in terms of style and theme, and it proves that by not really being something I loved. I love mysteries, unsolved crimes being solved, themes of racial and gender equality, historical fiction mysteries, books about writers and journalists, and stories about women breaking free of their expected gender roles. And yet, I didn’t love this, even though it features all of those things. I like my crime and mystery books either to […]



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