Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Even New Houses Can Be Haunted

The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons

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This is the only horror novel Anne Rivers Siddons ever wrote, and the only book of hers I’ve ever read, so I feel like we were on some sort of haunted parallel footing here. This is a very well done haunted house story written in a lyrical style, but with a lot of brutal, horrible scenes. The contrast between the nice, aesthetic portions of the book and the growing realization that a nasty little scene is right around the next page makes for a tension-filled […]

Revelator: Sometimes God is One of Us

Revelator: A Novel by Daryl Gregory

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To risk starting out on an annoyingly pretentious foot, Daryl Gregory is an author I liked before he was cool. I’d been enjoying his work before he broke out into the front tables of bookstores with Spoonbenders, and I feel an affection for his writing and the interesting things he does within the horror/fantasy field. I find him to be a writer like Robert Charles Wilson, a sure-footed storyteller whose name on the cover of a genre novel guarantees an interesting and fast moving read. […]

Save your time, avoid this book.

Saving Grace by Debbie Babitt

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I’m not going to bury the lede, I deeply dislike this book. There is not one likable character, nor one that exhibits more than one dimension of personality. The story alternates between frustrating and non-sensical and the finale twists are eye-rolling. This is a bad, Z-grade attempt to emulate Gillian Flynn, Tana French, and Paula Hawkins without understanding what makes those three so good. Mary Grace Dobbs is the newly sworn-in sheriff of her hometown of Redemption, Arkansas in 2019. She got the job after […]

I’ve read scarier ghost stories for kids

The Family Plot by Cherie Priest

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Mrs. Winthrop is determined to get rid of her home. It is an old, Southern Tennessee beaut of a home filled with original wood stairs and rails, original furniture from when it was built way-back-when, filled with old family belongings that to the Music City Salvage team will be worth a fortune. After the patriarch of the family-run business purchases the home he sends in his team to gather the scrap: daughter Dahlia, drunk nephew Bobby, Bobby’s son Gabe, and unrelated worker Brad. They show […]

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad…House

It Will Just Be Us by Jo Kaplan

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A knock at the door. A series of frantic knocks at the door. Yes, It Will Just Be Us  nearly starts with “it was a dark and stormy night”. Our narrator, Sam, is a down-and-out adjunct professor of archeology barely hanging onto her sanity. After a series of upsetting events, we find her moving back to her crumbling, ancestral mansion in on the edge of a foreboding Virginia swamp. The mansion is, for all intents and purposes, haunted. It’s haunted by the living specter of her […]

cbr12bingo – Debut

Boys of Alabama by Genevieve Hudson

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Oh dear. Boys of Alabama is a lot. In Genevieve Hudson’s debut novel we are introduced to small-town Delilah, Alabama through the eyes of Max- the new kid in town. Max and his family just moved to rural America from urban Germany, and we leap into the culture shock with them. Delilah has two religions: Christianity and football- and the two form a dangerous communion. Max is sensitive, quiet, and gay. He can also bring dead things back to life; one touch and wilted flowers bloom. […]



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