Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


As if going home isn’t bad enough, now you’re also a werewolf

Such Sharp Teeth by Rachel Harrison

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One thing that I really appreciated about this novel and was rather refreshing is that after the narrator, Rory, gets bit by a werewolf, she doesn’t spend weeks denying the idea of the supernatural. From the beginning, she acknowledges that she was bitten by a monster, even if she tells everyone it was a bear because she doesn’t want people to think she is crazy. Based on her new cravings and other changes, she quickly puts it together with werewolf. She still doesn’t totally believe […]

Play Nice by Rachel Harrison

Play Nice by Rachel Harrison

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I don’t know. I had to sit with this one for a bit. Maybe because I think that if Harrison had taken more time, this book would have hit a sweet spot. I think though that how things resolved in the end was what had me not loving this book. I keep waiting for that gut punch moment like I got when I read Harrison’s Black Sheep or The Return. Though this book does a lot of what I call great reveals about the underbelly […]

So Thirsty by Rachel Harrison

So Thirsty by Rachel Harrison

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Trigger warning: Animal death, cannibalism, and gore. Bless Rachel Harrison for always showing us the folly of bad marriages and toxic friendships. I really did enjoy this book, but thought the ending was so unrealistic and very unsatisfying. I wish Harrison had gone as darker as she had with the ending of The Return. And I think that she didn’t delve enough into Sloane/Naomi’s messed up friendship. That said, I did enjoy this. So Thirsty follows Sloane who is leaving to go out of town […]

Demonology

Play Nice by Rachel Harrison

Fiend by Alma Katsu

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I read two books last week, both horror, both the kind of horror that used its tropes to tell a larger tale… Play Nice**** I’ve confessed my love for Rachel Harrison’s work many times in this space. If you don’t count Stephen King — who I don’t exclusively read for horror — Harrison is my favorite horror writer. I love her textured takes on womanhood and the decisions women have to make at critical moments of their lives. I’m glad I was cued into her […]

The Return by Rachel Harrison

The Return by Rachel Harrison

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Trigger warning: Disordered eating. So I really liked this one, though parts of it dragged. I did think that there were a couple of dropped plot points (mostly around Tristan), but thought the book was a great horror novel looking at female friendships and what is really a best friend. Be warned though, it had a lot of body horror though for people who are squeamish. “The Return” follows 27 year old Elise who is stuck in a dead end life in Buffalo. Her other […]

Early Fall Leftovers

To Start A War: How the Bush Administration Took Us Into Iraq by Robert Draper

The Travelers by Chris Pavone

A Walk Among the Tombstones by Lawrence Block

Dark Fire by CJ Sansom

The Menendez Murders: The Shocking Untold Story of the Menendez Family and the Killings that Stunned the Nation by Robert Rand

Stasi Child by David Young

The Cover Wife by Dan Fesperman

So Thirsty by Rachel Harrison

Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich

Geiger by Gustaf Skördeman

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll

Slow Horses by Mick Herron

The Devil Knows You're Dead by Lawrence Block

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I’ve read some interesting stuff lately and I wish I had made more time to document it but life gets in the way that life sometimes does. Not all bad, just life. To Start A War**** I had a long thing here about connecting this to the 2024 election but I don’t want to talk current electoral politics on here, at least the specifics of them. A good book if you want to know the intelligence (ha) perspective of how we wound up in a […]



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