Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Reader, I married him. Because it should be me or no one.”

Murder Road by Simone St. James

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When newlyweds April and Eddie pick up a mortally wounded hitchhiker on a deserted road, the last thing they expect is to be suspected of the crime. But to prove their innocence they will have to solve a decades-old mystery. The book’s blurb leans a bit heavier on the mystery-thriller aspect than the horror-paranormal, so I’m glad that other readers’ reviews emphasized the latter, or else I might have been disappointed expecting a straightforward cold case mystery. There’s an eerie feeling which hangs over the […]

You can’t break the ties that bind

A Box Full of Darkness by Simone St. James

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This is the most I have enjoyed a Simone St. James novel in a while. She is always a dependable author and storyteller but some of her novels go beyond that. For me those have been The Broken Girls and The Sun Down Motel. We can now add this one to the list for me. It’s also dedicated to Stephen King, and it feels especially fitting for this novel to be the ones dedicated to King. Not only does she return to the setting of […]

Paranormal Activity but Passive-Aggressive

The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St James

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Bingo Square: B (Book) This wasn’t my favorite St. James, though it was still an entertaining read. But when reading a Simone St. James novel, I guess I just want a bit more ghost story to it all. Of course there is a ghost and a supernatural connection because it is after all a novel by Simone St. James but after a spooky set up in the beginning, the supernatural elements feel a bit less relevant for the plot than in some of her other […]

Two and a half cigarette men!

The Sundown Motel by Simone St. James

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I saw this recommended on reddit, bought it on audible and literally the next day zirza panned it on here. Sadly, zirza was right, it’s not great. A cross between a mystery and a ghost story, The Sundown Motel tells the story of nefarious things happening in the small town of Fell, NY, where Viv Delaney disappears after her night shift at the titular motel in the 80s, while her niece Carly investigates the case in 2017. The POV switches between these two women and […]

“Their wives … their mothers … sitting in silence and screaming into darkness”

Lost Among the Living by Simone St James

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While they write in different genres, authors like Fiona Davis, Simone St James and Sarah Beth Durst all hit a similar mark for me – novels that I know will be at minimum solid and dependable, sometimes even more, and all authors still have a bit of a back catalogue left for me. Sometimes you discover an author and immediately devour all their work. With these authors, I’m slowly working my way through but they are my fall back plans when I am not sure […]

Break your silence if you would/before the sun goes down for good

The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

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It’s 1982, and small-town Viv has big-city ambitions. Mostly, she just wants to get out of the town where she has lived all her life; she has a vague ambition to move to New York and become an actress, so off she goes in spite of her mother’s protestations. One dodgy hitchhiker later and she ends up at the Sun Down Motel, a run down establishment in the town of Fell, New York. The hotel manager offers her free board in exchange for running the […]



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