Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Featured Review Archive

These reviews, which were promoted in CBR social media, on our homepage, and in Pajiba Love, appear below by review publication date, not by date featured.

 

Fresh scares from a needed perspective

Living Ghosts and Mischievous Monsters: Chilling American Indian Stories by Dan SaSuWeh Jones

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Readers who have been craving a selection of tales reminiscent of Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark should look no further than Living Ghosts and Mischievous Monsters: Chilling American Indian Stories, compiled by Ponca storyteller Dan SaSuWeh Jones.  Jones is a busy guy: he is a writer, producer, and artist; he’s worked as an Imagineer for Disney and produced for Sesame Street; he is a sculptor, a former Chairman of the Ponca Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma, and he assembled this creepy collection of […]

Weird and Sweet

Cat Lady by Dawn O'Porter

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Best for: Folks who like stories about women who society can’t quite place. A little bit like Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, but different. In a nutshell: Mia is married to Tristan, stepmother to Oliver, and deals with Tristan’s ex wife Belinda on a daily basis. She is an executive at a very small business, and has started attending a pet grief support group. Only issue: her beloved cat Pigeon is very much still alive. Worth quoting: “There must be so much freedom when you […]

Rage against the dying of the light

Men Have Called Her Crazy (2024) by Anna Marie Tendler

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Bingo square rage. I think this completes my bingo row, along with fanfic, fiasco, earth day, golden Content note for the book: suicidal ideation, eating disorders, self harm, mental health “Now I’m furious, so angry my whole body feels hot, and I can tell I’m about to cry.” (p. 211) I’m (still) a fan of Tendler’s ex-husband–and I love that this isn’t about him. Well, it’s about him in the sense that he’s the ‘unfaithful husband’ of the narrative, presumably, the shadow that lurks behind […]

Honestly incredible… I’m at a loss for words.

All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir

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CBR 16 Bingo – Rage: …It’s in the title. No explanation required. This book, told through 3 perspectives, one from the past and 2 in the present. In the past, in Lahore, Pakistan, Misbah is newly married to Tofiq in an arranged marriage. They end up coming to the United States hoping for a new start and end up opening the Cloud’s Rest Inn Motel. In the present, Salahudin (Misbah’s son, nicknamed Sal) and his best friend Noor were so close they were like family, […]

The Navajo Lens

Shutter by Ramona Emerson

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I have always pursued good character-driven crime fiction. Yes, plotting is important and necessary to a good story but as I’ve said many times, I need a reason to care about what’s going on. The less I care about the characters, the less I’ll care about what’s going down. This is why whodunits rarely do it for me: they’re too focused on the mystery to make me care about who killed who. Shutter is not a tightly-plotted novel and that might bother some readers but I was so […]

How Many Lies, How Many Truths

The Truth According to Ember by Danica Nava

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The Truth According to Ember ended up on my reading list because of social media. When the ARC was released author and reviewer folks who I follow were promoting it because they liked what they were reading, but also it is a romance by and about Native people published by a mainstream publishing house (in this case, Berkley). While I didn’t receive an ARC, I was interested enough to keep an eye out for publication, and once that happened, I immediately placed myself on the […]



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