Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About msvreadsbooks

CBR13 participant

I love books, and after completing graduate school, I want an excuse to think deeply about them again. Proud granddaughter of multiple cancer survivors and would love to read and write for a cause.

msvreadsbooks's Reviews:

Home Before Dark

Home Before Dark by Riley Sager

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This is my #home square for CBR13 bingo.  Home Before Dark was incredibly fun to read! It reminds me of the kind of meta consideration of true crime documentary subjects in a book I recently reviewed, Every Last Fear. This time, it’s a meta consideration of the subjects of a haunted house book.  Along the lines of Amityville Horror, the book at the center of this narrative tells the story of a small family who moved into a large estate called Baneberry Hall in Vermont. […]

Burnout, or, Why to Stick It to the Man

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Amelia Nagoski

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This is my “Self Care” bingo entry.  I just finished reading Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. I’ve read so many self-help/self-empowerment/self-care books, that I feel like Burnout wasn’t necessarily presenting me with information that I didn’t already know, but it was putting together information that I already know in a surprising way.  Burnout is written by two sisters – Emily and Amelia Nagoski – and it is specifically aimed at woman-identified people and the specific stressors we […]

Every Last Fear, and the People Affected by True Crime Entertainment

Every Last Fear by Alex Finlay

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This is the entry for the “Free!” square in bingo. I borrowed it 🙂 This was a really fun book to read. Horribly depressing subject matter, but there were some twists and turns. I won’t say the mystery is impenetrable as it becomes fairly clear about halfway through, but the way the events unfold is very interesting.  Matt Pine is a student at NYU who is dealing with the aftermath of a true crime documentary about his brother, Danny Pine, and the murder of Danny’s […]

Mary Dixie Carter’s The Photographer

The Photographer by Mary Dixie Carter

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Another scary, psychological thriller with an unwell woman at the center (and a person on the cover #cbr13bingo). Delta Dawn is a photographer in New York City, and she spends most of her time taking photos of children’s birthday parties having discovered her knack for making children look happy and healthy and like their parents’ dreams.  She routinely photoshops images that are less than perfect to fulfill the fantasy these wealthy families pay her to portray. When she meets the Straub family, Delta feels she […]

My dream cast for Gods Behaving Badly

Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips

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I picked this book up because I love a mythical retelling, and it was pretty fun. The entire time I was reading this book, I kept trying to think about the casting, because I think it would be a fun movie or miniseries. And because I’m a sucker for polytheistic, supernatural beings being forced to live in the modern world. Gods Behaving Badly finds the Olympian gods trapped in a house in London in the 20th century. They have lost much of their power, and […]

The Plot of The Plot is a Very Good Plot

The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz

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Who owns a story? A plot? That is the core issue of this novel. Jacob Finch Bonnen is a struggling writer who has fallen into teaching creative writings in MFA programs after publishing two novels. The first was well received and landed him on a list of new and noteworthy authors, and his second basically confirmed his place in the obscurity that can only be experienced by the once-great.  During a low-residency MFA program, he meets a student who changes his life. Evan Parker is […]



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