Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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“Katarina Shaw was in the building, and she had come to win.”

The Favorites by Layne Fargo

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Confession 1: I have rewritten the quote used for the title of this review.  The actual line from the book is “Katarina Shaw was in the building, and that bitch had come to win.” but I didn’t want to swear in the title of a review.  Katarina (Kat) Shaw and Heath Rocha are ice dancers with Olympic aspirations, while they have talent they don’t exactly have much support (emotionally or financially) from the people in their lives.  Kat’s mother died when she was six, and […]

Justice, rage, vengeance

They Never Learn by Layne Fargo

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I remember when I originally saw the trailer for Promising Young Woman – from that first teaser, it looked like something in the spirit of Hard Candy except that the protagonist was now an adult and punishing men for transgressions. And then I saw a spoiler thread of “this movie is not what you think” and after reading the actual plot, immediately lost interest. I still haven’t seen it or Saltburn. This book, on the other hand, is exactly what I wanted that movie to […]

A Feminist serial killer romp

They Never Learn by Layne Fargo

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Some people are offended by the idea of a woman taking the law into her own hands and murdering rapists. I am not one of those people, especially in this nearly Handmaid’s Tale existence we’re currently living in. Sorry not sorry. Our main characters are Scarlett Clark and Carly Schiller. One is the aforementioned murderess (and English professor), and the other is a kinda scared college student. We travel between these two ladies stories throughout the book. They both are associated with Gorman University. That’s […]

“ But I didn’t kill him to teach him a lesson; I killed him to carve him out of this world like a tumor. And I’d do it again.”

They Never Learn by Layne Fargo

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CBR Bingo: Cold Trigger warning: sexual assualt, mild spoilers Layne Fargo’s They Never Learn is the story of a feminist killer. Dr. Scarlett Clark, professor of English, targets all manner of deserving male victims: rapists, predators, abusers. The story opens on her staging the suicide of a young college football player who participated in the gang rape of a fellow student. She adds strychnine to his energy drink, an incredibly painful way to go. Scarlett is an ice cold killer in execution, but driven by […]

thrillers are bit of a hit or miss for me, this was sort of…neither?

They Never Learn by Layne Fargo

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This is not a case of false advertising–I went into this book fully amped up to read about a female serial killer who makes a career out of offing terrible men whose crimes fall outside the purview of the judicial system. Zero issues there, honestly! But what I couldn’t get into was the tone of the whole thing. It seemed to veer at times: between showing what scary competence can look like, to having Scarlett make some uncharacteristic mistakes, to a historical plot that’s meant […]

“Even in his final moments, I doubt he learned his lesson. But I didn’t kill him to teach him a lesson; I killed him to carve him out of this world like a tumor. And I’d do it again.” #CBRBINGO – Gaslight

They Never Learn by Layne Fargo

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It takes a lot for a thriller to get five stars from me, but this book fully earns it. I’m fairly certain that unless I have an exceptionally stellar rest of the year, this book will be making it into my top ten books of the year, maybe even my top five. I have made nearly all of my IRL friends read it, so now I want everyone who I have only met virtually to read it, too. It gave me joy. I do not […]



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