Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Lineage of Madness

The Noh Mask Mystery by Akimitsu Takagi

by Leave a Comment

An aspiring mystery writer and his childhood friend must join forces to solve the mystery of a string of deaths in a prominent Japanese family that may be the result of an inherited curse. I’ve always enjoyed reading works in translation – they seem to bring you closer to the place in which they are set – but I definitely haven’t read many genre works. As such, I was intrigued by the prospect of this locked room murder mystery, written in 1949 but never before […]

“A podcaster has decided to ruin my life, so I’m buying a chicken.”

Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera

by 2 Comments

Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It hasn’t affected the contents of my review. Listen, when it does the thing it does thing, so I had to round up to five stars because it’s so rare that I truly love a thriller. So many of them sound exactly the same, and have the exact same premise, and don’t really do much interesting beyond trying to shock the hell out of you (which I find uninteresting as the basis for a book). This […]

No Reunions

There Should Have Been Eight by Nalini Singh

by 2 Comments

Especially do not attend any reunions that are in memory of a lost friend or are being held in New Zealand.  Between this book, Wellington Paranormal, and Taskmaster NZ I’m starting to be very suspicious of what’s happening on that island. Eight teenagers were the best of friends until everyone’s favorite, Bea, died. Over the next nine years the group has drifted apart but Bea’s sister Darcie has organized a reunion for them at her family’s creepy mansion out in the countryside. It should be […]

When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?

High John The Conqueror by Tariq Goddard

by Leave a Comment

I don’t know who I would recommend this book to at all but I know that person wouldn’t have otherwise been me. There’s a lot going on with this book: mystery, folk horror, urban wyrd (which is apparently an English subgenere), as well as running commentaries on police brutality and gentrification. I’m not sure it all works — and at times it is a bit wobbly — but I enjoyed reading it. There was something about Tariq Goddard’s storytelling that made me really connect with […]

Childhood Nostalgia / American Propaganda

The Kachina Doll Mystery by Carolyn Keene

The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder

by Leave a Comment

I devoured both the Nancy Drew and Little House books when I was in elementary school, so it feels a little odd to read them in such close succession now. I still enjoy them, but I’ve rather lost the cuddly feeling since then. It’s more obvious to adult me that the books were written in the expectation of reaching a certain sort of child, and that child did not look like me. The Kachina Doll Mystery – 3 stars When Nancy Drew is summoned to […]

“What I am is an adult woman with agency and the tools to make choices. Feel free to, you know, treat me accordingly.”

Bride by Ali Hazelwood

by Leave a Comment

Nowhere Book Bingo: One-word title CBR16 Sweet Books: Exciting (This was one of my most anticipated book releases of the first half of 2024) Misery Lark is the only daughter of a powerful vampyre councilman, and for much of her life, she lived among human strangers as a diplomatic hostage, to maintain the fragile peace between vampyres and humans. To make her a bit less lonely, an orphan named Serena came to live with her, and now that Misery is all grown-up, Serena is her […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo