Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Crime Spree

Skin Deep by Sung J. Woo

The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly

The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny

Hell in the Heartland: Murder, Meth and the Case of Two Missing Girls by Jax Miller

Later by Stephen King

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I binged a lot of crime fiction (with one non-fictional exception) as there was a lot of traffic on my already long commute this week, allowing me to synergize eyeball reading with audio. Plus I took off the weekend so I had some extra time… Skin Deep 3 stars So rare, entertaining and enjoyable to have a transracial adoptee as a protagonist. While author Sung J. Woo doesn’t lean too hard on Siobhan’s background, he weaves it in to make her a fully realized person. The […]

Don’t you hate when a book starts out strong only to disappoint you?

The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton

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I so thoroughly enjoyed 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle that I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Stuart Turton’s latest novel, a mystery set aboard a 17th century East Indiaman trade ship sailing from Batavia (now Jakarta) to Amsterdam. Within pages of meeting Sammy Pipps, a detective or “thief-catcher” of Holmesian perception, and his bodyguard/Watson/Boswell Arent Hayes, I was hooked. That’s the difficulty of strong openings: The rest of the novel has to live up to them. Now I’m sadly in the position of […]

Big Summer is a Big Departure

Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner

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Daphne Berg and Drue Cavanaugh were once best friends until that one day where Drue pushed Daphne just way too far. They haven’t spoken since.  Looking back, Daphne realizes the friendship was a little one-sided and had a slight frenemies vibe. Six years later, Daphne has moved onffrom her friendship with Drue. She’s made a comfortable life as a social media influencer, she just made a major plus-size brand deal and she’s feeling comfortable in her body. Then Drue pushes back into her life. Drue is […]

Well, I’m goin’ to New Orleeeans…

Every Dead Thing by John Connolly

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This is book is something. A lot. Too much. Entertaining. Frustrating. It really runs the gamut. It would probably be easier to review it by listing the good and the bad… Good: -Deep sense of atmosphere. -Two twisty mysteries for the price of one. -Tries a lot of different genres and, for the most part, mashes them up well. -Uses art and history in an intriguing way, especially when describing the killings (I was getting Hannibal tv show vibes) -Really well-plotted for a first mystery book, especially […]

My first non Murder Squad Tana French, and I still liked it

The Searcher by Tana French

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In 2020, I was super excited to read a Tana French book I found in my (virtual) bookshelf that I thought I had not yet read.  To my disappointment, it was just one of her (in my opinion) lesser novels, that now, a mere one year later, I have forgotten the ending to again.  This time, I made sure that this wasn’t a repeat.  EIther way, I’m sure that this would have been a memorable book because it is the most different from all other […]

When Nothing Else Matters

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

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The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is fairly easy to describe: an alternate history mystery tale set in a Jewish colony in Alaska that’s about to be handed over to the United States. But it’s so much more. This book pays homage to the great hardboiled traditions of the past but has a big beating heart in the middle. And it also functions as a hilarious and sad commentary on Jewish life post-World War II. I’m aware of how acclaimed Michael Chabon is but I’ve not had much […]



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