Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

The Book of Cold Cases

The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James

by Leave a Comment

I think the only book of Simone St. James I have really enjoyed has been The Sun Down Motel, and even that fell apart for me towards the end. I think the supernatural aspects of this book just actually didn’t work in this one one. The main character, Shea, was too self righteous for me and I got really tired of her by the end of the book. “The Book of Cold Cases” follows receptionist, Shea Collins. Shea is just going through the motions of […]

“She accepted the visit and lived in anticipation, wondering what was to come. It was November 19, 1950. She would be dead in ten days.”

The Broken Girls by Simone St. James

by Leave a Comment

I’m not going to compare this to The Sun-Down Motel, which is the only other book of hers I’ve read, because they are very different books, which I wasn’t expecting because of their seeming similarities (dual timelines, ghosts, murder). And on its own, I enjoyed listening to this book very much. (Rebecca Lowman does a good job with the narration, although her male performances sometimes slip into silliness.) The two timelines are: Vermont, 1950, at the boarding school of Idlewind, a school for girls who […]

Sundown, you better take care if I find you been creeping ’round my back stairs

The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

by 1 Comment

While I’ve been lurking and getting book ideas, I have had a terrible time focusing enough to write up any of the (few) books I’ve actually managed to finish – I blame the pandemic. The Sun Down Motel, by Simone St. James, sat on my shelf for at least a week before I peeked at it, but once I peeked, I was hooked! The plot follows two women, one a night clerk at the Sun Down Motel in 1982 and the other the current night […]

Library Bingo

The Dark Tunnel by Ross Macdonald

The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris

Billy Summers by Stephen King

The Broken Girls by Simone St. James

A Darkness More Than Night by Michael Connelly

by Leave a Comment

I haven’t been able to keep up with the Cannonball Read Bingo, but I have been reading stuff for my library’s bingo, which helps because it encourages me to try things I’d either put off or left on my shelf to rot…   The Dark Tunnel ** Went back to the beginning with Ross Macdonald for this one. I love Ross’ Archer series and his standalones aren’t bad but this one is. Unfocused plotting, expository dialogue, characters conveniently bouncing in and out. Macdonald was trying […]

A whole bunch of horror

A head full of ghosts by Paul Tremblay

The elementals by Michael McDowell

Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix

Later by Stephen King

The Sun Down motel by Simone St. James

The only good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The hunger by Alma Katsu

Lovecraft country by Matt Ruff

by 4 Comments

Hi! My name is The Book Omnivore and I am a few months late to the Cannonball Read  party. I hope that’s ok. I’ve participated in CR a couple of times before but I always hesitate to join because some years I read loads of books and other years my brain refuses to read anything more complicated than the instructions for how you make tea, and I never know what kind of year it’s going to be. But having already read 27 books by May […]

Murder mystery + ghost story

The Broken Girls by Simone St. James

by Leave a Comment

The Broken Girls is a combination murder mystery and ghost story. While flawed, it’s an entertaining read and does an admirable job balancing two murders in two time periods with the mysterious visions seen at a 1950s boarding school for “troubled” girls. In Vermont in 2014, journalist Fiona Sheridan is haunted by the 20-year-old murder of her older sister Deb. Although the killer, Tim Christopher, Deb’s former boyfriend and the son of an important local family, was quickly apprehended and has spent the last 20 […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo