Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Zirza

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I am an English teacher from the Low Countries. Like everyone else I aspire to one day write a Booker Prize Winner, but until then I contend my self with reading stuff and writing about it. I try to keep the bitchiness to a minimum, but sometimes I can't help myself. In my spare time I enjoy complaining about the weather and sleeping. I lack the attention span for good books and the tolerance for bad ones. I am stuck in literary purgatory. Hey, at least it's warm here.

Zirza's Reviews:

Weddings: a Bit of a Faff

Husband Material (London Calling #2) by Alexis Hall

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In Husband Material (predictably the sequel to Boyfriend Material; number three in the series, Father Material, is still pending), Luc and Oliver are still a happy couple. They are thirty-ish, and anyone who is thirty-ish will remember that that is the age at which one seems to have a matrimonial or matrimonially-adjacent activity seemingly every week. There are four in this book. There is also a funeral. The sequence of events naturally leads Luc to the question whether or not he should propose to Oliver. […]

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 […]

“Like eating very expensive chocolate, savouring every moment because you don’t know when you’ll have it again.”

Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall

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Luc O’Donnell is the son of two rockstar parents: his mother is a French-Irish (but mostly French) folk singer, his father a legendary rock star who has been absent from Luc’s life since he was a toddler. Luc is, to put it mildly, a mess: when we meet him, he is trying and failing to make out with a guy who turns out to be a Buzzfeed reporter. After the terse encounter ends, Luc flees the club, faceplants outside on the kerb and is promptly […]

Not what Schrödinger had in mind, but I’ll take it

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

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Jason Dessen is a physics professor at a local college. He lives in Chicago with his wife Daniela and his son Charlie. Once upon a time, Jason was a promising young scientist, destined for greatness, who gave it all up when his girlfriend turned out to be pregnant. Jason’s life is not unpleasant, but it is dull and sedate and the what-ifs occasionally nag at the back of his head. But then, suddenly, Jason is abducted at gunpoint. His assailant stabs him with a syringe. […]

The Women Come and Go

Insidious Intent (Tony Hill&Carol Jordan #10) by Val McDermid

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A car is set ablaze in a lay-by in the rural north of England. Initially, it is thought that it was left there by a couple of carjackers trying to dispose of it, but upon closer inspection, the body of a dead woman is found inside. Police inspector Carol Jordan, head of a newly minted major crimes unit covering several large cities in the north, investigates the crime and with the help of her friend, criminal psychologist Tony Hill, she tries to stop the killer […]

Welcome to the Land of Missed Opportunity

Make the Season Bright by Ashley Herring Blake

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Make the Season Bright – Because one of the main characters is called Brighton, get it?  Charlotte Donovan is a successful musician, living the dream in New York. She is a violinist in a string quartet, about to set off on a huge European tour. First, though, Charlotte must survive December, the month when her life usually comes off the rails. December is when Charlotte becomes extra accident-prone. Worse, it’s the month in which her fiancée Brighon left her at the altar. To help her […]



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