Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Come for the gratuitous torture porn. Stay for the randy sex scenes. 

Birdman by Mo Hayder

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Weirdly enough, Goodreads gave me Calvin and Hobbes in their other-readers-also-enjoyed-selection. And I get it. There is never a bad time for Calvin and Hobbes, but I definitely need some eye bleach after this one.  London, 1999. During construction work on an empty lot, the dead body of a woman is found. Her body is severely decomposed and it takes the police a while to identify her. More bodies are found. They all belong to strippers, prostitutes, drug addicts – people who are loved by […]

Full of Bad Conclusions, But Readable Overall

The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer by Brian Masters

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I have very mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it’s a good overview of the case and conveys some of its complexity. It lays out Dahmer’s childhood and mental state well, and the narrative is clear without feeling overly voyeuristic. On the other hand, I disagreed with a lot of the author’s opinions and felt that his reliance on a Freudian model was a huge failing in the book. His main conclusion is that the hernia operation Dahmer had when he was […]

Bodily Harm

A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers

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I meant to cobble this together along with some other books I’ve been reading the last few days into one review. But I couldn’t with this one. From the first few pages, I knew it would grab me. And it had the energy to carry to the end. I’m a gracious grader when it comes to reviews. I don’t mind that. A four star book for me is a good book. A three star one is a good book with nebulous flaws. I don’t give […]

The Nothing Man: A worthy entry into the emerging meta-true crime genre

The Nothing Man by Catherine Ryan Howard

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This was a really fun book!!! Earlier in the year, I read Every Last Fear which follows the story of a young man whose family was killed and whose story became a true crime phenomenon. The Nothing Man falls into the same category of meta-true crime fiction, and it highlights the importance of the victims who are often left out of the narrative.  The story of The Nothing Man takes place in county Cork in Ireland, and is told from two perspectives. One is from […]

Just the right level of Creep

Famous Last Words by Katie Alender

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“No matter how many times I vowed to quit, every night I found myself with the candle lit, the ring on my finger, trying to get through to my dad. Because I needed to find him. I needed to tell him I was sorry I killed him.” Willa and her mother are following her new Hollywood hotshot stepfather out to LA. They both hope it will be a chance for them to start over. To put to rest the notion that Willa will somehow be […]

A dated serial killer drama

Sacred Sins by Nora Roberts

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I haven’t read a lot of books by Nora Roberts, despite her prolific output.  I borrowed this one, as it appeared to be a stand alone in comparison to most of her trilogies, and I didn’t realize at first that it was published way back in the late 1980s!  I suppose it was a testament to the story that it didn’t jump out at me immediately that there were no cell phones or Google searches.  However, that doesn’t mean it was all good! The main […]



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