Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About RaRaGabor

CBR14 Participant

Public librarian reading in Western NY.

RaRaGabor's Reviews:

Romance-adjacent historical mystery

The Right Sort of Man by Allison Montclair

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This is a delightful, breezy read, romance-adjacent without actually being romance. It’s the late 1940s in London. The War is over, the men are home, but rationing is still in effect, and there’s rubble from the Blitz everywhere. Iris Sparks and Gwendolyn Bainbridge work together to run a matchmaking agency: the Right Sort Marriage Bureau. Miss Sparks, we understand, was involved somehow in the covert part of the war effort, and Mrs. Bainbridge is a war widow with a young son. Both women are doing […]

Marriage and friendship in middle age

Good Company by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

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This book crept up and grabbed me by the heart, in the best possible way. Good Company centers around the relationships between four friends, in two married couples. Flora and Margot, were roommates in New York in their twenties, both working actors. Flora meets and marries Julian, another actor. Margot marries David, a pediatric surgeon. “Good Company” is the name of the small theater company that Julian and, to a lesser extent, Flora, run. Twenty years later, Flora and Julian have moved to LA with […]

Cool premise, questionable tone

Midnight Riot / Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

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The “Rivers of London” series has been on my TBR for a long time. It’s billed as X-Files meets Harry Potter in London, and you might as well call it RaRa Catnip and be done. A work assignment relating to Mysteries in May finally gave me the push to read it – well, to listen to the audio on Libby. Peter Grant is a Probationary Constable, waiting for his long-term assignment after training. He’s hoping to be a detective with the Met, but the odds […]

Not everything needs to be a mystery

First Cut by Judy Melinek and TJ Mitchell

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First Cut  is a debut medical mystery from the husband and wife writing team of Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner. Our main character, Dr. Jessie Teska, is (we assume) heavily based on Judy Melinek’s experience as an ME for Los Angeles and San Francisco. Jessie has left her job at the LA Medical Examiner’s office under something of a cloud, and has just started a new position in San Francisco. While contending with heavy workload, old and […]

Let’s talk about the Ship of Theseus

Mickey7 by Edward Ashton

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Well, this was a delightful little SciFi romp, and a super quick read. Imagine, if you will, one of the infamous Red Shirts from your favorite SciFi show. Poor guys – they just have to keep recruiting more and more of them as they get killed on away missions. Well, in Mickey’s world, they’ve solved that problem with Expendables. Mickey’s job title with his colony ship is Expendable: he gets the worst, most dangerous jobs. And when he dies (he’s on his seventh iteration as […]

BRB, renting all the slashers

My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

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My first experience with Jones was The Only Good Indians a couple years ago, and from super eerie cover to last page, I was well and truly hooked. When I saw that his newest was available in Libby I jumped right on it – and I was not disappointed! Jade Daniels lives in the tiny town of Proofrock, Idaho. Jade is a self-proclaimed Horror Girl, who has watched so many slasher movies that she’s started to see the world around her through that lens. When […]



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