Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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When favorite authors disappoint you, pt 2: disappoint harder

The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

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In my second review for CBR13, I wrote about how disappointing it is when one of your favorite authors writes a book that you just do not like. I don’t know if this is some kind of cannonball curse, but with book 6 of this challenge, it has happened to me again. I used to be a huge YA fan, and the first book in Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking trilogy still ranks as one of my favorites. His short novel A Monster Calls is amazing too […]

The Monster of Grief

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

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It took me three-quarters of the way through A Monster Calls before I began to appreciate it. Throughout much of the book I was repelled by the protagonist’s unlikability, and his bottomless anger at everything and everyone in his life. But then my view changed. The main character is a boy named Conor. His mother is sick with cancer, he rarely sees his father who lives in another country, and his mother’s mother is cold to him. Conor is plagued by an unspeakable dream every […]

This was fine, but the satire didn’t really resonate for me.

The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

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Everybody raves about Patrick Ness, but this is my first experience with his books. He seems like a talented writer. His prose was well-executed. He knows his way around story and character arcs. And he seems very imaginative and inventive. I even read this book pretty fast, and while reading, I wasn’t ever wishing I was reading something else. But . . . I just didn’t click with it. And the parts I did click with were sort of undercut by the ending. It was […]

It’s a Perfectly Fine Book

The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

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I don’t have a lot to say about this one. I wanted to like it more than I did. That said, it wasn’t a bad book. It was just . . . fine. I enjoyed reading it, it kept my attention, and it’s a quick read that I finished in about a day. I would recommend it, I don’t regret reading it (though I do regret buying it), and I can’t point to anything I disliked about it. But it was still just . . […]

But What Goes on With Everyone Else While the Chosen Ones Deal With all the Villain Stuff?

The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

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I have only read one other novel by Patrick Ness before (also of the YA variety) and did not like it very much, but I had heard good things about The Rest of Us Just Live Here and figured I should give it a shot: as it turns out I found this novel be well worth the read. Despite involving some fantastical elements, these magical components for the most part are only the background of the more human-centric story which the book focuses; at it’s […]



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