Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Rep Square: The Good Sister

The Good Sister by Sally Hepworth

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I’m using this as my REP bingo square.  The Good Sister is told from the perspective of two Australian sisters (and twins), Rose and Fern. Rose is an accomplished interior designer married to a wonderful man and all she wants is to be a mother. Through her journal entries, however, we hear about her fraught relationship with her own mother’s narcissistic ways.  And Fern, while not explicitly identified as such, seems to have Autism Spectrum Disorder given her sensory processing issues, social discomfort, and love […]

I Just Wanted a Nice Soothing Book about Murder

The Mother-In-Law by Sally Hepworth

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Like many people, this year I’ve been more than usually interested in books that are comforting, but of course what feels comforting is different for different people – along with Jane Austen and Barbara Pym, for me one of the most soothing types of book are murder mysteries. I like the predictable structure, the ultimate triumphing of good over evil (all too rare in real life), and seeing the ways that different authors stretch and interpret the standard ideas of the genre. Unfortunately for me, […]

The real message here is to limit your children’s screen time

The Mother-in-Law by Sally Hepworth

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CBR12 Bingo: Pandemic This is another entry in the ever-growing genre of “twisty” books aimed at women. I admit I am always tempted by these books–I have to know what the twist is! And for the most part, I actually enjoyed The Mother-in-Law, unlike some other entries into this genre. The book opens with Lucy and her husband receiving a visit from the police to tell them that Lucy’s mother-in-law, Diana, with whom she has never gotten along, has been found dead by apparent suicide. […]

A couple of not so thrilling thrillers

The Invited by Jennifer McMahon

The Mother-in-Law by Sally Hepworth

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(3 stars) The Invited by Jennifer McMahon Why do I keep reading Jennifer McMahon books? They’re never terrible, but they’re never great either. But I keep picking them up! Helen and Nate have decided to undertake a rather ambitious project. Quitting their jobs teaching high school, they move to Vermont to build their own home on a piece of property with a very dark past. Helen, obsessed with history in general and with the property in particular, does enough research to realize that a lot […]

Apparently I Am All About the Grudges

The Family Next Door by Sally Hepworth

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Sigh. How to talk about this book. I can’t say much without giving away spoilers. But I can say this at least. The ending was eye-roll inducing and not believable at all. Also having the baker’s dozen of characters made it hard to follow anything that was happening with everyone in this book. Some plots don’t connect together until Hepworth tries to force fit things here and there. I started to skim some chapters because I just wanted to get to the end of the […]

Don’t throw stones at the neighbors if your house is made of glass

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“Things were far better watched from a distance….When you watched too closely, you saw things you didn’t want to see.” Three years ago Pleasant Court resident Essie Walker left her daughter at the park and went home. She quickly came to her senses, retrieved her daughter and sought treatment for postpartum depression. In the present day Essie has convinced her husband to have another child, Polly, and she is doing much better this time around. When a single woman with no children, an oddity in […]



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