Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Seven people go for a tour in a mysterious library housing a very rare book, and you can probably guess the rest.

The Library After Dark by Ande Pliego

by 4 Comments

Hooo, this was a hot mess. The idea of the library was great, but the execution failed. I feel this book’s existence is a symptom of the pressure on genre authors to publish a book a year. It might have been good if given more time to cook. She had a good story in her first book, and now this one is entirely made up of thriller and mystery cliches, all to the tune of overblown figurative language that makes no sense and does not […]

Sorority Madness

Finlay Donovan Crosses The Line by Elle Cosimano

by Leave a Comment

The problem with Vero’s advice not to go looking for chin hairs where there aren’t any is that there’s always a seven foot long chin hair to be found. She’s so young, she’ll learn mwuhahahaha… Also don’t go borrowing trouble is pretty good advice. But trouble is what Finlay Donovan is best at! In this book though, the focus is on intrepid nanny Vero Ruiz. This is the sixth book in the series so it’s not really an ideal place to jump in. But it […]

Ravens are Nerds

The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson

by Leave a Comment

The Raven Scholar is actually pretty good; I was a little surprised because I sometimes don’t have great luck with the popular best-sellers, even in genre fiction. The characters are mostly what drive things, Neema and Cain are a lot of fun, both individually and together, Sol has some good personality for being a magical being fragment, and a lot of the rest of the supporting cast has enough definition that as an ensemble, they’re interesting to watch. Most everyone has some kind of tragic […]

“Like the old Shadowhunter motto says, “Shadowhunters: That Evil Demon Stuff Is What We Are Here For.” But in Latin, probably.”

Secrets of Blackthorn Hall: An Illustrated Shadowhunter Novel by Cassandra Clare; ilustrated by Cassandra Jean

by Leave a Comment

When the Blackthorn great-aunt dies, to the surprise of everyone she leaves her house in England to Julian, with the proviso he has five years to fix it up before ownership reverts to the Clave. So off Julian and Emma go to merry old England, to deal with large spiders, piles of dust, gnome contractors, and the ghost that is apparently tethered to the house. Can they solve the mystery and free the ghost, or will they be buried around all the secrets that lurk […]

Her name! Was Victoria!! Sandwich!!!

The Jam Sandwich Detectives by Clare Thompson

by Leave a Comment

Thanks to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for the audio ARC. It hasn’t affected the contents of my review. Okay, picture Big Little Lies, but less literary and more cozy mystery-esque. A group of moms attend a cake bake-off where everyone has baked a Victoria Sponge, but before many cakes can be tasted and judged, the host (whose name is also Victoria Sandwich!) drops dead. One of our main characters, Rachel, has the blame pinned on her by the other mothers because of some offhand comments she’d […]

More Murder, Less Family Drama Please

The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins

by Leave a Comment

Decades after the heiress Ruby McTavish was kidnapped as a toddler and dubiously recovered a year later, her adopted son Camden and his wife Jules return to her ancestral home in a bid to claim her long-neglected inheritance. This book draws inspiration from several cases in the early 20th century in which a kidnapped or vanished child was thought to be returned, only for it to be later discovered that it was instead some unrelated child who for whatever reason was trying to be forced […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo