Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Murder of the Week

A Twist of a Knife by Anthony Horowitz

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I was a touch disappointed in Anthony Horowitz’s last Hawthorne mystery, so I started The Twist of a Knife with my expectations tempered. I love Horowitz’s two Atticus Pünd novels (Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders), and I suspect I’ve been judging the Hawthorne series a little too harshly because of that. I still enjoy them, though, for what they are: light-hearted, fun mysteries that read like episodes of your favorite murder-of-the-week television series. The Twist of the Knife is an entertaining installment. When the novel […]

Nun of the Above

Scorched Grace by Margot Douaihy

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As readers, we all dream of books that are specifically written for us. Certainly, we sometimes like to be challenged and pulled out of our comfort zone. But most of the time, we sit around asking questions like: Man, I wish someone would write a book in the hardboiled vein of a badass Catholic nun trying to solve a mystery in sun soaked New Orleans. Or words to that effect. Anyway, yes, Margot Douiahy wrote a book that was basically fine tuned to someone who likes the […]

February 2023 Leftovers

Dead Wind by Tessa Wegert

One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus

Messi vs. Ronaldo: One Rivalry, Two Goats, and the Era That Remade the World's Game by Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg

The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz

The Title: The Story of the First Division by Scott Murray

The Vanishing Stair by Maureen Johnson

Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie

The Fiancée by Kate White

The Guns of Heaven by Pete Hamill

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Hey on the last day of the month, it finally snowed in New York! Huzzah! Dead Wind**** I can’t talk about why I like this book without even the mildest of spoilers if you’ve been following the series. So I’ll talk about what I appreciate. I’ve been in an on-and-off reading slump the last two months. It’s been hard to finish stuff. Tessa Wegert’s Shana Merchant series really feels like the exception to the rule. I like her writing, her pacing, her protagonist. All good. One […]

Okay now this is a twist!

The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill

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Okay. Let me see if I can accurately summarize this book. The Woman in the Library is a book by Sulari Gentill about an author named Hannah Tigone who is writing a new mystery novel. Hannah sends each of the chapters she writes to a penpal named Leo for feedback. Each chapter of The Woman in the Library is a fictional chapter in Hannah’s book followed by feedback and notes from Leo. The fictional book that Hannah is writing is about an author who was awarded a […]

The Serial Killer Book I’ve Been Waiting For

Notes On An Execution by Danya Kukafka

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I went in to this book so wary! I’m not a huge fan of serial killers or the true crime mania that glorifies men who murder (mostly) women. So even though I’d seen glowing review after breathless recommendation of Notes On an Execution, I doubted I’d get past 20%. I am never so pleased to be wrong than when it comes to loving an unexpected book. The premise of this one is simple, it is the day of Ansel Power’s execution. There are brief chapters […]

“You rescue me. I rescue you. That’s how this works.”

Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo

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This is the second book in the Alex Stern series. This review will contain some spoilers for the first book in the series, Ninth House because I’m not sure how to review it without referencing things that happened in the last book. So if you’re new to this series, start there. Darlington is still missing, “in Spain” to those not in the know, and in Hell, possibly dead to those initiated in the secrets of Lethe House. Galaxy “Alex” Stern doesn’t have a lot of […]



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