Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Night Owls

The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

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Years ago, I worked a late night shift at a security desk. The human body is simply not built for such work. Try as I might, I never really adjusted. I kept hearing noises and thinking there was a looming presence nearby. I gave my ghosts names. I learned to lean into the creepiness, even though I thought disaster was looming at every turn. It’s the typical paranoia induced by a lack of sleep and company. Night shift fiction often takes me back to those […]

Leaving it all on the field

The Terrorists by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

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Is this it? Really it? All I get from the Martin Beck series? Damn. What great books these are. They’ve ruined the police procedural for me forever. When I first sat down to read Roseanna about five years ago, I would have never guessed this would become one of my favorite book series of all time. I found it to be a drab, uninspiring procedural novel. Fun if you like reading about shoe leather detective work but otherwise nothing special. And then someone turned me on to […]

Good, but Forgettable

Grace is Gone by Emily Elgar

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Based on the real-life story of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, Grace is Gone tells of a Mother and daughter duo, Meg and Grace, that are bound at the hip. Grace suffers from debilitating diseases that leave her wheelchair ridden and utterly dependent on her mother. At first their relationship feels pure and inspirational. The pair are the darlings of their town, until one night, Grace’s chair is found toppled over while Meg lies bludgeoned to death nearby. Jon, a disgraced local journalist joins forces with Grace’s […]

Houston Has a Problem

Sunset City by Melissa Ginsburg

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I read Megan Abbott’s supportive blurb on the back of this book before I started it. By the end, I wish Megan Abbott had written it. It’s a familiar premise but tailor made for her gifts. Melissa Ginsburg’s not a bad writer by any means. She really makes the city of Houston come alive: the sprawling highways, inexplicable traffic, bottomless amount of dive bars, sense of change while rooted in the familiar. But I had a hard time getting into this one, short as it […]

Free Will

Even The Wicked by Lawrence Block

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When I first saw what the plot of this one was, I groaned. I’ve really grown to love the Matthew Scudder series in the few months that I’ve been pouring through it. They’re great as far as being gritty New York crime tales but Lawrence Block also does a wonderful job of building a world around his recovering alcoholic ex-cop PI. It takes the conventions of PI tales and breaks them just enough to feel lived in. Every story in the series feels unique. Unfortunately, […]

What a lovely creature you are.

The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley

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This is a hard book to review or it may be that this is a hard time for me to write a review. I thought that reading would be a refuge for me as we self isolate but concentrating enough to fall into a story hasn’t been easy for me. Oddly, I’m leaning more towards exercise, of all things, stress cleaning, playing Wordscapes and Scrabble on my phone and making meal plans based on the miscellaneous foodstuffs in my house. BUT…if there ever was a story to […]



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